Over the last two centuries, this river bluff environment has been greatly altered. The bluff top area was once oak savannah with prairie and woodland elements, while natural springs and shallow flood plain lakes in the river bottoms supported wildlife and vegetation important to the survival of Native people. Before Gideon and Samuel Pond arrived in 1843, Native Americans lived from the land through hunting, gathering, and limited farming. The area was later more extensively modified by four generations of the Pond and St. Martin families, who farmed, planted orchards, and raised livestock on several hundred acres between modern-day Lyndale and Cedar Avenues. When the Ponds first arrived, they encountered open views of the river valley bordered by prairie and dotted with stands of burr oak and cottonwood, but deep furrow plowing and grazing quickly transformed the land. The wooded areas present today emerged after agricultural production stopped in the 1960s and through the continuing stewardship of the valley by the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge and the City of Bloomington.