Nerstrand Big Woods State Park
Located in southeastern Minnesota, Nerstrand Big Woods State Park is comprised of two nearly horizontal layers: one a layer of glacial drift about 150 feet thick over a layer of Platteville limestone.
The limestone was deposited at the floor of a shallow sea during the Ordovician Period. The glacial drift is a result of the area having been covered by glaciers several times.
The soils in the park are formed on the glacial drift, and, in the valley bottom, on sediments deposited by the stream.
The park is made up of one of the last remnants of Big Woods vegetation along with rolling hills and valleys, traversed by Prairie Creek and its waterfalls.
In 1854, the original woods contained about 5,000 acres. The early settlers set up a series of small woodlots in the centre of the Big Woods.
During the 1930s, major clearcutting was done on several hundred acres of the park. In the late 1930s and the early 1940s, many people tried to protect the area and to preserve it as a state park.
By 1945, the State Department of Conservation had acquired much of the 1,280 acres and Big Woods was established by the State Legislature.
Within the park was an 80-acre farm, owned by the state and leased to a family who lived and operated a rotational grazing dairy farm. Farming at Big Woods Dairy included no row crops or pesticides.
The only fertilizer was the manure left by cows. Cows grazed in pastures divided by movable electric fences. By rotating the herd through divided pastures or paddocks, no area was over-grazed or trampled. This was the only modern working dairy farm in a state park in the US.
The dairy was in operation for a ten-year lease. It is now in varying stages of restoration. The goal is to restore to the site the historic native plant communities, which included a mix of prairie, savanna, and oak woodland.
All the prairie vegetation and most of the trees have been planted.
The next stage, in 2011, is to plant groves of young burr oak to help create future savanna.
See map of the park.
We would like to thank Shawn Fritcher, Parks Southeast Area Resource Specialist, Rice Lake State Park, and Joni Liljedahl, Information Consultant, DNR Information Center, Information and Education Bureau, Department of Natural Resources, State of Minnesota, for information provided for this page.
(This page was updated in November 2012.)
