Blue Mounds State Park in southwestern Minnesota preserves one of the state’s largest remaining prairies around Blue Mound, a prominent Sioux Quartzite escarpment whose cliffs rise up to 100 feet above the grassland. The park is known for rock climbing, a managed bison herd established in 1961 and later developed for conservation, and evidence of much older human presence, including a 1,250-foot rock alignment marking equinox sunrises and sunsets. Created during the Great Depression and expanded in later decades, it also preserves notable Works Progress Administration dams and related structures, valued for both work-relief history and rustic quartzite design.