Pond Dakota Mission Park is the site of the historic Oak Grove Mission and the 1856 Gideon and Agnes Pond House. Gideon Pond and his brother Samuel, originally from Washington, Connecticut, devoted their lives to Christian service during the Great Awakening, a nineteenth-century spiritual revival in America. Gideon had worked as a carpenter and farmer, and Samuel as a clothier and teacher. In 1834 they came to Minnesota, where they served as farming instructors and missionaries to Chief Cloud Man's band of Dakota Indians at Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet in the Minneapolis area. In 1843 they followed Cloud Man to this Minnesota River bluff location and founded the Oak Grove Mission. The Ponds also served the Bloomington, Minnesota, community as farmers and ministers, and the site reflects the lives of Gideon and Samuel Pond, the Dakota people, and the missionaries who worked with the Dakota during the mid-nineteenth century, as well as life in early Bloomington.