Nature
Minneopa State Park, established in 1905 west of Mankato, preserves Minneopa Falls, a distinctive double waterfall whose Dakota name means “water falling twice.” As Minnesota’s third-oldest state park, it grew in the 1960s to include Minneopa Creek’s lower reaches and a broad prairie landscape shaped by the ancient River Warren valley. The park protects wooded gorge, tallgrass prairie, Big Woods, and floodplain forest, and in 2015 reintroduced American bison to a prairie enclosure. Its significance also includes deep Dakota and archaeological history, nineteenth-century tourism, the 1862 Seppman Mill, and Works Progress Administration Rustic Style structures from the late 1930s.
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Minnesota · United States
