Last summer, several local Boy Scouts completed projects for the Excelsior-Lake Minnetonka Historical Society on their way to receiving the highest scouting rank of Eagle Scout. Several scouts completed rehabilitation work on the historical society’s building itself, and another dove into the archives.
Brady Bunkelman, now a freshman at Cornell University, researched and compiled a pamphlet for a self-guided historical walking tour of downtown Excelsior, along with a box in which to store the pamphlets. “I had gone on a lot of walking tours in other towns,” including in Hopkins and when he was traveling in Montana, he explains. “I noticed that, when we were driving into Excelsior, there’s a sign that says, ‘Welcome to Historic Excelsior’ and I thought, ‘Huh. I don’t think I know a lot about Excelsior.’”
Paul Maravelas, museum committee chair at the Excelsior-Lake Minnetonka Historical Society, says that projects like this not only teach scouts valuable managerial skills, but “we were really pleased with the quality of the work that they did.”
