24590 Glen Rd
Shorewood, MN 55331, USA

Peter Gideon Farmhouse - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

"Peter M. Gideon, a native of Ohio who took up a claim on Lake Minnetonka in 1853, devoted forty-one years of his life to developing fruit trees that would withstand northern winters. Although his accomplishments in fruit culture are numerous, the most famous and most important to Minnesota is the Wealthy apple, a variety he developed by 1868 from seeds obtained from Bangor, Maine, seven years earlier. The introduction of the Wealthy, which Gideon named for his wife, the former Wealthy Hall, marked an epoch in American apple growing, since it was the first full-sized variety to survive cold winters, bear regularly, and have good keeping qualities. To northwestern fruit growers the Wealthy was for decades unequaled as the most profitable apple for marketing.

Having inherited a love of horticulture from his parents, Gideon began growing seedlings when he was a very young child in Ohio. By the time he arrived in Minnesota he had a deep interest in the culture of many fruits, and in 1854 he planted on his Lake Minnetonka farm orchards of apples, peaches, pears, plums, and quinces. Within ten years, however, all his trees had died, leaving him little to show for his hard work

There is an often-told story that at this time Gideon had only eight dollars in his pocket -- money that might well have been spent for a badly needed suit of clothes. He determined, however, to spend it for seeds in order to continue his experiments. For the new suit he substituted a garment of his own making. He sewed together two castoff vests, cut the legs from an old pair of trousers and attached them to the vest for sleeves, and reinforced the patches on the rest of his worn clothing. Thus, he made a suit that was described as "odder than ornamental." With the money saved he obtained the means to continue the experiments that at last resulted in the Wealthy apple.

Never satisfied with his efforts, Gideon continued to test and improve the Wealthy and in so doing developed several additional strains, among them the hardy Peter and Gideon apples. In 1878 he became superintendent of the University of Minnesota's experimental fruit farm, which was established that year on a tract adjoining his property. Some of the trees he planted still flourish there. For years he was an indefatigable laborer who "loved to work, not for fame or for money," according to one acquaintance, "but for the benefit of his fellow men."

The Wealthy apple became a favored variety throughout America and was even known in Europe; its fame brought Gideon wide acclaim as a horticulturist. Although his reputation as a fruit breeder was unchallenged, he was considered personally eccentric and a temperamental nonconformist. He was an outspoken advocate of temperance, abolition, woman's suffrage, and Universalism. On the other hand, he did not hesitate to decry horse racing, prayers at secular meetings, and men's beards. "No man had ever more the courage of his convictions," said his daughter at the time of his death in 1899. "He believed thoroughly in his work, and in his ideas as a man meant to accomplish the best results.... But his ideas were as often blighted and frost bitten as his beloved trees," she wrote. "His religion, his philosophy and his politics, which cost him so many sympathizers, were as truly his own production as the Wealthy apple."

Two markers commemorate Gideon's accomplishment in producing the Wealthy apple on his Lake Minnetonka farm. They stand at the function of Hennepin County Road no. 19 and Glen Road. The original Wealthy apple tree is believed to have stood about eighty rods north of the monument erected in 1912 by the Native Sons of Minnesota in Gideon Memorial Park. The second marker was erected in 1965 by the Minnesota Historical Society."