American street names are often simple and straightforward — many are named after either numbers or trees. But drivers in the suburbs of Mendota Heights, Eagan and Apple Valley may find themselves cruising down major roads with peculiar names like Pilot Knob, Yankee Doodle and Johnny Cake Ridge.
An anonymous reader contacted Curious Minnesota, our community-driven reporting project fueled by readers' questions, wanting to know the history behind the odd names.
Pilot Knob isn't just the name of a thoroughfare that runs from Mendota Heights to Farmington, it's also a 112-acre historic area listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017, said Gail Lewellan, co-chair of the Pilot Knob Preservation Association. That area and road got their name from a portion of a high hill in Mendota Heights that once had a knob-like formation at its peak.
"Riverboat pilots in the 1800s would know that they're almost to downtown St. Paul, or what was becoming St. Paul, when they got to that location," Lewellan said.
Lewellan said the area is sacred to Dakota people, who called it Oheyawahi, which means either "a hill much visited" or "a sacred place much visited, the place where people go for burials."
Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas suggested in 1848 that Minnesota's territorial capital be located at Pilot Knob. Later, the Treaty of 1851 was signed at the site, putting 25 million acres under the U.S. government's control. In the winter of 1862-63, the area's Dakota people were forced into an internment camp across the river, below Fort Snelling. Many died, and some were buried on Pilot Knob.
The other two unusual names have their own stories, said Matt Carter, director of the Dakota County Historical Society. He tracked down newspapers from the '60s and '70s to determine the origins of Johnny Cake Ridge Road, which begins in Eagan and ends in Apple Valley. Before portions were paved, the road was named by a local couple who encountered a street named "Johnny Cake Ridge" elsewhere. Johnnycakes are somewhat similar to pancakes and date back to the Revolutionary War, he added.
Yankee Doodle Road veers horizontally through Eagan before becoming Argenta Trail in Inver Grove Heights. Its back story: During WWI, people "tried to get rid of as much German as they could," Carter said. Part of what is now Yankee Doodle was once called "Old Schmidt Road" after a local farmer of German descent. Schmidt was sometimes heckled about his address at a tavern he visited, Carter said. Tired of the teasing, Schmidt came up with the most American-sounding name he could: Yankee Doodle Road. The name stuck, Carter said.
