Lake Shetek State Park spans 1,109 acres along the east shore of southwestern Minnesota’s largest lake in this region, where glacial processes at the headwaters of the Des Moines River created a broad, shallow landscape later shaped by prairie cultivation and regrowth. Long valued for boating, camping, and other water recreation, it also preserves a tragic episode of the Dakota War, when attacks in August 1862 killed fifteen settlers and left others captive or fleeing. The park took much of its present form through Works Progress Administration development beginning in 1934, and today it unites recreation, natural history, memorial ground, and notable New Deal rustic architecture.