Bloomington’s Queen Anne Kiddieland was once a birthday destination

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Some lost Minnesota places manage to stay alive in vivid memories decades after they’ve been torn down.

That’s especially true for long-closed theme parks like Excelsior Amusement Park on the shore of Lake Minnetonka and Bloomington’s Queen Anne Kiddieland.

Deb Burk has been thinking about Queen Anne Kiddieland recently — it’s where she first learned to love cotton candy. On weekends in the early 1960s, Burk’s brother drove a pint-sized race car at the small amusement park’s racing track for children.

“I begged our dad every week to drive my brother’s car but I was never allowed to, until one day they had a Powder Puff race for all of the sisters,” she said. “My brother was not happy because I’m sure he figured I would crash, but I actually won the race.”

Burk was about 6 at the time, and still has the little trophy from that “great day,” she said.

She wrote to Curious Minnesota, the Strib’s reader-powered reporting project, to ask about the long-gone park. “Where was it located, and are there any photos?” she asked.

A couple named Tom and Ann Casey opened Queen Anne Kiddieland in 1951 next door to their Casey’s ice cream shop, said Bloomington Historical Society curator Jean Bellefeuille.

“The big thing was that you would have birthday parties at Queen Anne Kiddieland, and then you would go over to Casey’s and you would get your ice cream,” said Bellefeuille.

The term “kiddieland” was popular at the time, as new parks sought to appear wholesome to suburban parents and different from the “sleazy” amusement parks where teens hung out, University of Minnesota professor Karal Ann Marling wrote about Queen Anne Kiddieland in a 1990 Hennepin History article.

“Child-oriented post war families helped to create ‘kiddielands’ to serve their particular needs for clean, safe spots where Mom and Pop could supervise their youngster’s afternoon on a limited number of decorous rides,” Marling wrote.

By 1953, Queen Anne Kiddieland had eight rides, including a miniature train, boats, a merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel, a Minneapolis Tribune columnist wrote after a visit that year. A video from 1958 shared on YouTube shows a little roller coaster and kids in bumper cars, where a sign admonishes, “Positively NO head on collisions.”

The paper featured an 11-year-old competitor named Jeannie Tripp, who was in her third year of racing.

Kid race cars, called “quarter midgets,” have been around since the 1930s. They go about one-quarter as fast as the smallest “midget” race cars for adults and drive on a short 1/20-mile oval track, according to a Car and Driver feature about the sport. (Today, the Minnesota Quarter Midget Racing Association hosts races on Sundays at Elko Speedway’s Little Elko track.)

For a time, children also came to Queen Anne Kiddieland hoping to see one of their favorite TV characters.

Roger Awsumb, who played railroad engineer Casey Jones in the Channel 11 show “Lunch with Casey,” would drive the park’s miniature train, Bellefeuille said.

A St. Louis Park man named Dusty Sauter built the train, a ⅙ scale replica of a real Rock Island Line train called the Twin Star Rocket, in his garage, according to a St. Louis Park Historical Society account.

Queen Anne Kiddieland closed in 1967. Later, a 10-story tower called Southgate Office Plaza rose on the old Kiddieland site. The building was demolished in 2023. Since then, the site has been vacant.

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