Sakatah Lake State Park is an 842-acre park on Sakatah Lake near Waterville, where a glacially formed landscape of moraine, lake basin, wetlands, woods, prairie remnants, and farmland preserves a transition between central Minnesota’s Big Woods and southern oak barrens. The area was long part of the Wahpekute Dakota homeland, with the Cannon River serving as a travel route and burial mounds still remaining. After late 19th-century settlement and the arrival of rail service, local support helped secure preservation in the 1960s. Authorized in 1963 and opened in 1967, the park later incorporated an abandoned rail corridor as the Sakatah Singing Hills State Trail.