After Charles Lindbergh left Little Falls on his motorcycle in 1920 for the University of Wisconsin, he rarely returned. He came back once by airplane in 1923, landing his Jenny, the first plane he owned, in a field nearby. By then the farm had been neglected for several years. In 1927, during the frenzied aftermath of Lindbergh's historic flight, souvenir-seekers badly damaged his boyhood home. In 1931 the Lindbergh family donated the original farm property to the state of Minnesota, and a state park was established in memory of Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. Later, crews from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) cleared trails and erected buildings in the park. Several of those buildings still stand near the parking lot across the highway, and only a few remnants remain of another WPA shelter that once stood below the bluff.