The Bakken Museum

Earl Bakken was fascinated by electricity from boyhood, and that fascination shaped an extraordinary career. As a young engineer he co-founded Medtronic in a Minneapolis garage, and in the late 1950s he built the first small, wearable, battery-powered pacemaker, a device that transformed the treatment of heart disease and launched a whole industry of medical electronics.

Over the years Bakken gathered a personal collection of antique electrical machines, instruments, and rare scientific books, and in time he opened it to the public as a museum. That origin gives the Bakken its distinctive character: it is less a general science center than a heartfelt tribute to the history of one particular force, assembled by someone who had spent his life putting electricity to work in the service of healing.

The museum tells the long story of how people came to understand electricity, from early experiments with static and lightning to the batteries, motors, and medical devices that followed. Its collection includes historic instruments and apparatus that let visitors see how scientists of past centuries probed the mysteries of the electrical world, an area of science that once seemed almost magical.

One memorable thread ties the collection to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the early 1800s, experiments that made the muscles of dead animals twitch with electric current gripped the public imagination and helped inspire Shelley's tale of a creature brought to life by science. The museum explores that cultural moment, when electricity blurred the line between life and death in the popular mind, giving its exhibits a touch of the dramatic and the eerie.

Much of the museum's charm comes from its setting in a Tudor-revival mansion built in the 1930s, with paneled rooms, a great hall, and gardens on a rise above the lake. The building lends the science within an unexpected, almost storybook atmosphere, and the surrounding gardens invite a stroll before or after a visit.

Inside, the emphasis is on doing rather than only looking. Hands-on exhibits invite visitors, especially children, to experiment with circuits, magnets, and simple inventions, making the abstract idea of electricity concrete and playful. That mix of a grand old house, a serious historical collection, and interactive learning makes the Bakken feel unlike any other museum in the Twin Cities.

The museum sits above the lake now called Bde Maka Ska, a Dakota name meaning White Earth Lake, restored in recent years to honor the Dakota, whose homeland this is, the land they call Mni Sota Makoce, from which Minnesota takes its name. The lake is part of the Minneapolis Chain of Lakes, a string of urban lakes ringed by paths and parkland that is one of the city's great features.

That setting makes the Bakken easy to combine with the outdoors. Walking and biking paths circle the nearby lakes, and the neighborhood's leafy streets and lakeshore beaches draw crowds in the warm months. A museum visit pairs naturally with a lakeside stroll, so the science indoors and the city's beloved lakes outside make a full and pleasant afternoon.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.