The tale of a small woods

Frequent Birch Island Woods visitor Jim Millin sent an email to this EPLN reporter on Oct. 23, 2023, with a single word: “Installed.” Birch Island Woods, the conservation area without a single known birch tree or island, finally got an interpretive sign.

The attractive panel is installed at the parking lot trailhead tucked into the woods on Indian Chief Road, a bit south of Glen Lake Golf Course. It explains what happened to the island, if not the birch trees.

Designed by graphic artist Katie Qualey with history gleaned from the Terry Picha family, archives of the Friends of Birch Island Woods (FBIW), public documents, and oral and published histories, the panel mostly provides woods walkers with a quick glimpse at the area’s past.

Brief entries about Native Americans, steam-powered railroads, European farmers, the Glen Lake Children’s Camp, and a citizen’s campaign to protect a swath of rural Minnesota, speak to the character of this robust suburb.

The Birch Island Woods sign is the eighth one Qualey has designed for city-owned historic houses and parks. Last May, she was honored by her city with a 2023 Heritage Preservation Award.

The idea for an interpretative sign for Birch Island Woods was originally seeded a quarter-century ago during the campaign to save “the orphan woods” from development. Thirty acres of it were owned by the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority. In 1998, the county agency installed “No Trespassing” signs along the area’s perimeter. It had begun the process of selling it off to the highest bidder, meaning developers armed with smiley face buttons and bulldozers.

The Friends of Birch Island Woods (FBIW) formed and created a website with history and native habitat sections and a self-guided tour. FBIW also organized nature and history hikes, hosted a Sierra Club Tour-de-Sprawl, and produced two Haunted Woods Walks. They also pitched their land conservation case at eco expos, Round Lake events, the Birch Island Woods Plant Sales, the Minnesota River Bluffs Regional Trail, the State Legislature, the County Board and the EP City Council. FBIW’s buckthorn and garlic mustard pulls, and workshops began after the city acquired the county’s portion of the woods in 2001.

Like other city parks, the woods sports a handsome roadside monument. But the seeds for an interpretative sign only began germinating about four years ago when FBIW began considering dissolution. After 22 years of proactive good works fueled by sweat equity, Father Time and attrition were draining the group’s energy.

Germination

FBIW custodians Terry Picha and Cheryl Tsuchiya appreciated the impressive, interpretative signage along the Elizabeth Fries Ellet Nature Trail (spearheaded by Vicki Pellar Price and her nonprofit Writers Rising Up), the citizen-driven project in the Richard T. Anderson Conservation Area. They were also aware of that area’s new sign. It pays homage, principally, to the Feldmann Family, Swiss immigrants who began farming the gentler slopes of the Minnesota Valley bluff lands in the 1860s.

Picha’s family began farming on Birch Island Road in 1903. Czech immigrants had begun arriving in what became Eden Prairie and Minnetonka during the 1850s. The last of the Picha farms opposite the woods still grow vegetables and greenhouse flowers on 5.5 acres. It welcomes EP Historical Society visits, runs a Thursday farmer’s market from late July through October and the Birch Island Woods Plant Sale. This spring’s flower fête runs from May 8-19. In recent years, a percentage of the proceeds have been shared with Camp Eden Wood.

After meetings at city hall and the woods with Jay Lotthamer, former Eden Prairie parks director, and Matt Bourne, the city’s parks and natural resources manager, Tsuchiya and Picha became confident that a proposal they had been mulling over would work. FBIW would donate the $14,000 balance of its reserves to the city for dedicated Birch Island Woods improvements, including an interpretative sign.

During the City Council’s December 2021 approval of the gift, Lotthammer praised FBIW as one of the best examples of a grassroots organization coming together to protect and care for open space and to inspire others.

Reflecting on the park director’s remarks, Mayor Ron Case said, “That’s wonderful. I’ve been part of the (Friends) process, I think, from nearly the beginning. Its been a pleasure.”

As a young council member in 1998, during the tenure of Parks Director Bob Lambert and Mayor Jean Harris, Case began employing his enthusiasm, municipal savvy, and votes for the woods. During its span, FBIW received significant kudos for its upbeat, can-do political advocacy and citizen-driven stewardship.

A sign designer procedural

Having designed the timelines at the Cummins-Phipps-Grill and Smith-Douglas-More historic houses, and signs for the Feldmann farmstead, the site of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway’s Eden Prairie Depot (to be installed on the regional trail) and three panels at Staring Lake Park’s main building, Katie Qualey won the gig for the Birch Island Woods sign.

“It is exciting to see these historic visions come to life through these large interpretive signs, Qualey told Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN). “Each sign has its own special features. It’s like working on a puzzle – so fun to see how it comes together with photos and graphics. I enjoy the process.”

The sign projects are slowly launched with proposals, concept sketches, and pricing quotes. They amble forward with image selections, fact-checking, and authoring the historical notes sandwiched between design elements. Many emails and phone chats are exchanged before final approval.

Although the Eden Prairie Historical Society wasn’t directly involved in the woods sign project, its president, Kathie Case, recognized the value of the cluster of natural and historic assets anchored by the woods, much like her husband, Mayor Case. She put Qualey in touch with this EPLN journalist, the founding leader and default archivist of FBIW’s first decade.

Tsuchiya, the long-serving FBIW treasurer, still visits the conservation area. “It’s gratifying to walk the woods, see the new signage, and know that we left something for the city,” she said. “We worked hard and worked well together.”

Jim Millin, the guy who emailed the Oct. 23 alert about the sign’s installation, is a retired mechanical engineer whose priorities are no longer medical devices at Medtronic or, for that matter, an interpretive sign on a nature trail.

Millin has become a big-time volunteer buckthorn buster, working with the city in Edenvale Conservation Area and at True Friends Camp Eden Wood with Director John LeBlanc. The droll Mr. Millin focuses on habitat restoration but finds Qualey’s sign great-looking. “It is an indication,” he says, “that people are again showing an interest in Birch Island Woods.”

The other signmakers

The new woods interpretive panel is preceded by less distinguished signage installed mostly by tree-hugger activists in violation of city code.

Eden Prairie and Minnetonka residents had assumed that the then-nameless woods were a protected sanctuary. But when Hennepin County posted “No Trespassing” signs along its perimeter in 1998, the Friends began to organize. I figured the area should be branded Birch Island Woods in harmony with the road, lake and park. Our small group agreed, protecting the public and the press from the likes of, say, “Friends to Save Disposed Hennepin County Regional Railroad Property.”

“Save the Woods” signs began appearing in 1998. On the right, John Jamieson, former MnDOT commissioner and Prospect Park (Mpls) community organizer, poses next to a Friends pull-tab sign on Indian Chief Road in 2000. On the left, EP Council member Sherry Butcher Wickstrom ran for the Minnesota State Senate in 2002. Her campaign photo shows Sherry with Jeff, Alex, and Amy Strate.

Green planks with a website address and phone number stood for about a year until September 2000 at Edenvale Boulevard and Indian Chief Road. The phone number was airbrushed out for this article.

The green and white sign at Edenvale Boulevard and Indian Chief Road was bolted to posts that in 1999 had sported a county “For Sale” sign. The irony was savory. The handmade sign stood for six years and seven months. The home jet printer sign on the right was tacked onto an aspen tree opposite the Picha Farm during a Birch Island Woods Plant sale. It lasted a few days.

When the city acquired four additional acres for the conservation area from the Picha Partnership in March 2007, the signature sign was no longer needed. My son Alex and I retired it the following Memorial Day.

Handsome monuments, like the one at Birch Island Woods, mark the entrances to Eden Prairie’s parks and conservation areas. The sign, pictured on the right, explains how innovative, porous concrete slabs installed in 2012 along the lower skirts of the parking lot and driveway help keep rainwater runoff from flowing onto Indian Chief Road and into nearby wetlands. An errant car totaled the panel in 2023.

But wait, that’s not all

Since the interpretative sign was installed in October, three acres of buckthorn thickets between Indian Chief Road and the parking lot have been cleared by Minnesota Department of Corrections community work crews hired by the city.

Twenty years ago, hundreds of organized volunteer school, scout, church, and neighborhood buckthorn pullers worked in the area. But the devilish invasive was ignored and came back – until this winter.

Millin was recently designated by the parks department as a volunteer steward for the Birch Island Woods and Edenvale Conservation areas.

He told EPLN that Let’s Plant Trees, a non-profit reforestation program based in Lutsen on Lake Superior’s North Shore, will donate 500 seedlings to the woods.

White oak, silver maple, and hackberry seedlings are slated for planting on April 26 in the buckthorn-cleared areas. Let’s Plant Trees staff and volunteers from New Wave DV, a high-tech firm on Viking Drive, will be plugging in the infant trees.

Millin has committed to sowing native grass seed mixes provided by the EP Parks Department in the same area. With the Katie Qualey-designed sign and revived interest in habitat restoration, the muses of the old Friends of Birch Island Woods, with their own sign, are delighted.

Editors note: Writer Jeff Strate is a founding board member of Eden Prairie Local News and founding president of the Friends of Birch Island Woods. Pastor Rod Anderson, pictured in the article, is also an EPN Board member.

• Friends of Eden Prairie Parks (FEPP) is partnering with the City of Eden Prairie’s natural resources and forestry staff to organize volunteer-driven habitat restoration and educational projects and recruit and help train park stewards. For more information, contact FEPP on Facebook or email.

• Friends of Minnetonka Parks serves Minnetonka in a similar fashion and can be contacted via its website.