State park protects an American bison herd which grazes on one of the state's largest prairie remnants

How to Get There

Overview

Blue Mounds State Park is a state park of Minnesota, in Rock County near the town of Luverne. It protects an American bison herd which grazes on one of the state's largest prairie remnants.

The state park is named after a linear escarpment of Precambrian Sioux Quartzite bedrock, which although pink in color, is said to have appeared blueish in the distance to early settlers. Parts of the cliff are up to 100 feet (30 m) high. Unusual in the surrounding prairie landscape, they are a popular site for rock climbing.

The park also preserves a 1,250-foot-long (380 m) line of rocks aligned by Plains Indians which marks where the sun rises and sets on the spring and fall equinoxes. It also has a small reservoir for swimming, the only lake in Rock County. The park's interpretive center was once the home of the author Frederick Manfred.

Four structures and one building in the park, built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Wildlife

The park is home to a small population of coyotes and deer as well as various birds.

In 1989 the WPA developments were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a 60-acre (24 ha) historic district. The district contains five contributing properties—four structures and one building: Upper Dam, Upper Mound Lake, Lower Dam, Lower Mound Lake (all created in 1938) and a latrine (built 1939–42) located by the current cart-in campground. They are considered historically significant as examples of New Deal federal work relief and recreational development in southwestern Minnesota, and architecturally significant for their unique National Park Service rustic design using Sioux Quartzite. The two dams are particularly noteworthy, blending into the natural rock walls of the creek, an exceptional application of rustic style to utilitarian structures.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Blue Mounds State Park", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0