Minnetrista Museum & Gardens

  Minnetrista Museum & Gardens was founded in 1988. Built on the legacy of the Ball family and company, Minnetrista is a 40-acre museum and garden site located on the White River in Muncie, Indiana. The organization presents exhibits, nature trails, educational programs, and community events. Minnetrista’s 40-acre campus is located upon a bluff along the northern edge of the White River. Today, the site is home to modern museum facilities, five Gilded Age homes, the Minnetrista Boulevard Historic District (added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012), and over 20 acres of cultivated greenspace, including horticultural and ornamental gardens. From the mid-1890s until the 1980s, Minnetrista was home to the extended Ball family, inventors of the Ball Mason jar. According to Ball family legend, members of the family suggested the name “Minnetrista” for the property. The word combines the Sioux (Dakota) word “mna” (pronounced “mini”), which means water, with the Englis...