Glendalough was first developed by Ezra G. Valentine in 1903 as a summer retreat called Valentine's Camp, with a cottage, stables, boat house, and bath houses. He left the property to his son and daughter in 1905, and they later sold it to Fred A. Everts, who sold it in 1928 to F.E. Murphy, owner of the Minneapolis Tribune. Murphy renamed it Glendalough after a glacial valley monastery in Ireland meaning "Valley of Two Lakes," bought surrounding farms to expand the property, and started a turkey and game farm. Glendalough and the Minneapolis Tribune were purchased by the John Cowles family in 1941, and over the years the game farm and hunting preserve hosted several dignitaries, including Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon and Vice-President Walter Mondale. On Earth Day 1990, the largely natural and undeveloped property was donated by the Cowles family to The Nature Conservancy, and in 1992 the deed was transferred to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources for use as a state park. After about 89 years as a private game farm and corporate retreat, this stewardship had preserved marshlands, hardwood forests, open lakes, shoreline, and native prairies across almost 2,000 land acres. The park includes six lakes totaling about 1,000 acres of water and 9.2 miles of undeveloped lakeshore in western Minnesota, including Annie Battle Lake, Molly Stark Lake, Lake Emma, Sunset Lake, Lake Blanche, and West Battle Lake. It supports a large resident Canada Goose population, serves as a major waterfowl staging area and a wintering area for local white-tailed deer, and is home to white-tailed deer, raccoon, red fox, other small mammals, loons, and many prairie, wetland, and hardwood forest birds. Annie Battle Lake, lightly exploited while within the private game farm for more than 50 years, became a Heritage Fishery managed to build a natural population of larger, older fish, and the western portion of the park preserves a remnant of the tallgrass prairies that once covered millions of acres of America.