Father Hennepin State Park is located on the
southeast shore of Mille Lacs Lake. Visitors enjoy a large sandy beach for
swimming, two boat accesses, fishing piers and picnic sites with a panoramic
view of the lake. The park's 320 acres include two campgrounds and hiking trails
that wind through a hardwood forest and along the rocky shoreline of Mille Lacs.
The park's original vegetation was northern hardwoods mixed with marsh areas and
pines along the lake. The hardwoods provide shade during the summer and
spectacular color in the fall.Quick stats:
320 acres
130,086 annual visits
26,359 overnight visits
Naturalist:
The best way to learn more about Father Hennepin State Park is to stop at the
park office for a map and information about the park. Although the park does not
have a naturalist on staff, activities are offered occasionally.
Wildlife
Father Hennepin State Park is home to a variety of wildlife. Hawks, ospreys,
owls, and eagles are common. The tracks of beaver, racoon, mink and deer are
often seen in the soft earth or snow. Northern pike, walleye, bluegills, sunfish
and bass are found in the lake. The aspen stands and small clearings are
excellent for ruffed grouse. Squirrels and chipmunks thrive in maple and oak
stands. The small ponds and streams provide homes for amphibians and insects,
which in turn attract larger fish, birds and mammals.
History
The park is named after Father Louis Hennepin, a priest who visited the area
with a French expedition in 1680. Hennepin is not thought to have been in the
exact location of the park, but the park is named after him because he was the
first to write extensively about the Mille Lacs area. He called the area
Louisiana, in honor of France's King Louis XIV. In the spring of 1680, they met
a group of Dakota Indians, and accompanied them to their villages, about 15
miles from today's Father Hennepin State Park. Throughout the experience, Father
Hennepin kept a journal describing the lakes, rivers, landscapes, and lifestyle
of his hosts, the Mdewakanton Dakota. In 1683, the French published his writings
in the book, Description of Louisiana.
Geology
About 20,000 years ago, during the peak of the last glacial period, a glacier
called the Rainy lobe advanced from the Ontario region through what is now the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area and covered most of the Lake Mille Lacs region. As it
moved, the Rainy lobe picked up, crushed, and deposited fragments of the
underlying bedrock. As the glacier receded, streams of meltwater carried sand
gravel from the ice and dropped it in front of the glacier, a deposit called an
outwash.
About 15,000 years ago, another glacier, called the Superior lobe, advanced
from the Ontario region through the Lake Superior basin and into the area of
central Minnesota. It crossed over the outwash that the Rainy lobe had deposited
and pushed up the sand gravel into a formation of big elongated hills called a
moraine. When the Superior lobe finally receded it left a layer of reddish
sediment over this moraine and buried some stranded blocks of stagnant ice. The
reddish color comes from iron oxide in the sediment that the glacier eroded from
bedrock in the Lake Superior basin.
The enlarged moraine acted as a natural dam, blocking rivers and streams from
draining glacial meltwater to the southwest as before. As a result, the
meltwater from the receding ice collected behind the moraine and formed the
early Lake Mille Lacs. Water from the growing glacial lake spilled over the
moraine into the Rum River through an outlet about five meters higher than the
present outlet. The original outlet ceased to flow when ice blocks, buried in
the moraine, melted enough to open a lower outlet, causing the lake level to
drop and create the lake you see today. The lower outlet, which also found
drainage via the Rum River, is the one flowing today.
Landscape
Father Hennepin State Park is in the Mille Lacs Uplands subsection. Visitors
enjoy the diversity in this park: aspen-birch and mixed hardwood forests, pines,
conifer bogs, and swamps. The terminal moraine dam, responsible for the
formation of Mille Lacs Lake, is found here.
|
