Browns Valley marks the beginning of the Minnesota River Valley Scenic Byway, near the Continental Divide where the Minnesota River begins before winding through prairie, hardwood forest, and farm country on its way to the Mississippi River near the state's eastern border. The route passes towns, historical resources, managed wildlife areas, six state parks, canoe access points, and remnants of native Minnesota prairie, once the state's predominant ecosystem but now very rare. The Minnesota River follows a course shaped thousands of years ago by glacial movement, when this area lay along the southern shore of Glacial Lake Agassiz, which spread across much of Minnesota into the Dakotas and southern Canada; as the lake reached the Continental Divide, it drained south and formed Glacial River Warren, which cut the valley's path. Browns Valley is also the place where, in 1933, amateur archeologist William H. Jensen discovered human bones and a stone weapon in fresh gravel, traced the gravel to its source, and excavated a prehistoric burial pit with additional artifacts. University of Minnesota anthropologists concluded that the skeleton, known as the Browns Valley Man, was a male between 20 and 40 years old from the Paleo-Indian culture of 9,000 years ago.