You Have Until Feb. 15, 2024, To Visit This Minnesota State Park Before It Is Closed Permanently
By Trent Jonas|Published January 29, 2024
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Trent Jonas
Author
Trent Jonas came to Minnesota to attend college - and never left. He's a Twin Cities-based writer with a BA in English and a MFA in creative writing, a Minnesota Master Naturalist, and the proud father of two adult children. With more than a decade of freelance writing experience under his belt, Trent is often out exploring his favorite topics: Minnesota's woods, lakes, and trails. Rhubarb pie is his weakness, so discovering new diners is also a passion.
I’ve lived in Minnesota my entire adult life and, as I’ve grown older, my appreciation for our state’s natural beauty has only increased. I’ve visited 45 of our Minnesota state parks since 2019 and have set a goal of visiting them all. At the time of this writing, Minnesota is home to 66 state parks. In less than a month, that number will be 65, after a scheduled Minnesota state park closure on February 16, 2024. This month, I headed out to visit Upper Sioux Agency before it closes and to reflect on how this came about – and whether it should have ever been a state park in the first place.
In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature voted to return the land on which Upper Sioux Agency State Park sits to the Upper Sioux Community, the Dakota people who were originally permitted to retain the land - part of their ancestral territory - through a series of treaties in the 1850s.
To access the Yellow Medicine River Campground by car from the Visitor Center, visitors were required to detour around the damaged section of road for more than 20 miles. At the time the legislature voted to return the park land, there were several pending infrastructure projects that would have cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
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Upper Sioux Agency State Park was established in 1963 to preserve and interpret the remains of the Upper Sioux Agency.
The reservation was 20 miles wide and stretched from Big Stone Lake in the west to Fort Ridgely in the east. All the Dakota people in the Minnesota territory and the state of Iowa were removed to this reservation.
However, after a poor harvest in 1861, the appointed agent refused to release the food and money that were due to the Dakota people on the reservation for months. People were dying of starvation and illness.
The Upper Sioux Agency was one of the sites destroyed in the war. Of the buildings that once existed on the site, only one of the employee duplexes still remains. I found walking around this site particularly eerie.
The war raged up and down the Minnesota River valley for six weeks until peace was reestablished.
Over the course of the war, hundreds of Dakota people and settlers were killed. In December 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged at Mankato for their part in the war. It remains as the largest mass execution in United States history.
In the aftermath of the war, more land was seized from the Dakota.
The Upper Sioux Community, which has re-established itself in recent decades through legal recognition of treaty rights, court victories, and outright purchase of its historic lands.
Not only is the land immediately adjacent to the Upper Sioux Community, it contains the Upper Sioux Agency site, as well as the confluence of the Minnesota and Yellow Medicine Rivers, a historically important place in Dakota culture.
As I stood atop a small rise on the bluff and looked up and down the river valley, I could see why it would be an important place to the people who had lived here for centuries before 1862 - and for decades thereafter.
After years of waiting, in 2023, the Minnesota Legislature granted the Upper Sioux Community's request.
I think it’s encouraging, too, that the DNR has committed to establishing additional recreational sites in this part of the Minnesota River valley to replace those once available at Upper Sioux Agency State Park. In the meantime, you have a few weeks to visit this haunting Minnesota state park before its closure – and I recommend it if you you can make the trip. In the meantime, Lac Qui Parle State Park and Camden State Park are both near the area and offer excellent hiking and camping. And you’ll find plenty of things to do in the Granite Falls area, where you can stay at a charming vacation rental cottage.
Do you have a chance to visit Upper Sioux Agency before the Minnesota state park closure? What are some other parks in the Granite Falls area do you recommend? Let us know in the comments!
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