Nature
Barn Bluff, now often also called He Mni Can-Barn Bluff, rises about 400 feet above the Mississippi at Red Wing and is one of the Upper Mississippi’s most conspicuous landmarks. Geologically, it was lifted along the Red Wing Fault and preserves rock layers from Cambrian and Ordovician seas, later capped by glacial deposits. For Native peoples, especially the Dakota, it was a sacred place for ceremony, burial, and defense, with summit burials dating from about A.D. 900 to 1300 and a Dakota village at its base into the early 1850s. Known to explorers, artists, and travelers, it was later quarried for limestone before becoming a city park in 1910.
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Red Wing, Minnesota · United States
