Woman paints homage to ‘Mount Target,’ the infamous Eden Prairie snowbank
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Mountains are not in the Minnesota landscape due to the glaciers flattening the area thousands of years ago, but this year we have a new mountain in Eden Prairie, Minn. to compete with the Appalachians and Rocky mountains.
Welcome one of the latest man-made geographic features of Minnesota: “Mount Target.”
The mountain, also sometimes called “Mount Eden Prairie,” is a large snowbank in the parking lot of a Target in Eden Prairie Center. Photos showing the mountain’s crags and a Target shopping cart at its peak have gone viral in the past week on social media.
Some have been inspired to try to reach the top of the mountain, while others have captured the moment on paper.
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Becky Allen, a resident in Golden Valley, Minn. took on the challenge to encapsulate the mountain in her piece “King of the Mountain Shopping Cart - Eden Prairie Target March 2023.” She ended up at the site on accident while running an errand in the unfamiliar area and saw the shopping cart with her own eyes.
The cart on the mountain inspired her to paint.
“If I hadn’t seen the cart on it, I probably would’ve just thought, ‘Oh, that’s a big snowbank’ and kept driving on. But the cart, it stands out. Who put that there? Why? That’s hilarious!”
“I hadn’t painted in quite a few months and I had been wanting to for awhile” Allen said. “I thought it was cute and saw the pictures and just decided, ‘I’ll try painting this.’”
After seeing it on Saturday, it took about an hour to paint and sketch on Sunday. She used watercolor because “it’s kind of a tricky medium to use, so it’s just kind of fun to play around with and practice more with.”
The painting shows a red Target cart achieving a new level of royalty.
When deciding on a title, Allen explained, “I’m not very good at naming things. I know ‘King of the Mountain’ is when you were kids and you would all climb up on the snowbank and you would try to push each other off and whoever was the last one standing was ‘King of the Mountain’ so that’s probably also subconsciously thinking of that.”
“I didn’t know it had an official name until after I did the painting, people started calling it various things.”
She posted her painting on Reddit on Sunday afternoon and it quickly drew more than 3,500 upvotes and more than 100 comments. Some people have asked to buy prints of the painting.
“At this point, no, I’m not selling prints. But if somebody wanted to download and print it out themselves or set it as their phone background that’s cool with me. Just as long they’re not claiming it as their own or make money, I don’t really care who shares it.”
The snowbank was so popular that Eden Prairie police posted on Monday that officers visited it.
Allen can’t say when or where she’s seen snowbanks previously like this one.
“It’s an impressively big snow bank. What’s so impressive about it is it’s not just that it’s tall, it’s also very long.”
“It had to have been a good two stories — it’s big,” Allen said.
“Spring seems to be coming soon, so if anyone wants to see it in its full glory, probably go see it sooner that later. Obviously it’ll be around for a while, but I don’t think it’s gonna be quite as big looking,” Allen said.
It may be here for a while. Snowbanks take a long time to melt, especially if they’re dense.
“Mount Target” joins Lake Chipotle and crater-sized potholes on the list of Twin Cities weather-made wonders. . Several other mountainous snowbanks can be spotted around parking lots in numerous cities.
Sonja Faegre, whose Twitter name is @letloverule23, captured a photo of someone standing with an American flag on the Ridgedale Center snowbank a few weeks ago.
And Twitter user @amy_abts caught a photo of a “fallen comrade” at the edge of a snowbank — a red cart that appeared to have tumbled off its own peak. Perhaps there are several mountain kings to find and protect.
Target had not responded to MPR News’ request for comment as of Tuesday morning.
We may need a team of cartographers to capture the newest snow-mountain range beginning in Eden Prairie.
At the moment, though, we have videos, photos and a watercolor documenting the short-lived shopping cart’s legacy. People on social media reported it had disappeared from its throne by Monday afternoon.
