Around 25,000 years ago, huge blocks of ice were left here and eventually were covered with sediment deposits. About 15,000 years later, as the glaciers retreated, these blocks of ice were left in a valley below where Lake Minnetonka is today. As the ice blocks melted, the sediment on top of them collapsed, forming Lake Minnetonka. During the 1700s and early 1800s, the area was inhabited by Midewakanton people, a subtribe of the Sioux Nation, who referred to the lake with a phrase that sounded like Minn-ni-tanka, meaning "Big Water" in English. In 1852, Alexander Ramsey, Minnesota's first Territorial Governor, officially named the lake Minnetonka. Beginning in 1867, the lake's beauty was publicized far and wide, and people traveled by the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad to Wayzata to explore it, while hotels and boarding houses began to spring up. The lake was especially popular with southerners who came north to escape the heat and improve their health. Lake Minnetonka covers 14,528 acres, has 125 miles of shoreline, includes 18 islands and 36 bays, and reaches a depth of 113 feet in Crystal Bay.