Peter Gideon Farmhouse

Gideon, Peter, Farmhouse
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location	Shorewood, Minnesota
Architect	Unknown
Architectural style	Colonial Revival
NRHP reference No.	74001019
Added to NRHP	September 17, 1974

Peter Gideon was a farmer near Excelsior, Minnesota who was responsible for breeding apples that could withstand Minnesota's climate. Gideon's farmhouse, now within the boundaries of Shorewood, Minnesota, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Gideon moved to Minnesota in 1853, near Lake Minnetonka, and experimented with planting pear, plum, cherry, peach, and apple seeds. After ten years of experimentation, the harsh Minnesota winters had killed off all of his trees except for one seedling crab apple tree. Instead of giving up, he sent back to Bangor, Maine for seeds and scions, and continued his experiments by grafting a scion onto the crab apple tree. From this experiment, in 1868 he selected a variety of apple that he named the "Wealthy", in honor of his wife. This experiment was successful, and in 1870, Colonel John H. Stevens addressed the Minnesota Horticultural Society with these words:

True, we were under a cloud for a long time. We planted but did not harvest. Our trees withered and perished. Whether it was the frosts of Winter or the sun of Summer that caused them to prematurely die, no one has been able to determine. Plant as we would, the trees sickened and died. No wonder, then, we became discouraged. Orchards to the third and fourth planting failed, a constant drain on the pocket without a ray of light in the future, influenced us in abandoning the enterprise. But those days, and their trials, have passed.

Gideon later became the first superintendent of a University of Minnesota agricultural experiment station established in 1878. The station was abandoned in 1889, when he retired, but in 1907 the Minnesota Legislature established a fruit breeding farm between Excelsior and Chaska. The fruit breeding farm later became the Horticultural Research Center, which is now part of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. The center later developed the Haralson apple, introduced in 1922. The Wealthy apple is genetically related to the Haralson, though it took DNA testing to rediscover this fact after extensive hybridization.