"The Scenic City" & "the Little Yellowstone of MN"

A week from now, I will be getting back on my bike for day 2: Marshall to Redwood Falls.

Redwood Falls (motto: The Scenic City) just last month celebrated its sesquicentennial, but it was inhabited by the Dakota long before 1864. In 1851, the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux created a reservation along the Minnesota River, including the area that now is Redwood Falls, supposedly to help compensate the Dakota who had lost access to hunting and fishing lands due to white settlement but also to obligate them to continue to provide furs to the white settlers. The Lower Sioux Agency, by pretty much every account, was particularly corrupt. As a result, this area was the site of the first organized attack of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

Charles Eastman (either the son or grandson of painter Seth Eastman, depending on what you read) was born in this area. He was raised by his Dakota family, but then went east and got a medical degree before serving native communities and explaining to white people, in popular books, native traditions.

Redwood Falls is home to the largest municipal park in Minnesota, although we will be camping at a park more in the center of town. Apparently, the big park, formerly a state park named after Governor Ramsey, is known as "the little Yellowstone of Minnesota." This cracks me up. Is there a Yellowstone of Minnesota, and this is smaller than that?

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/Maggie2014TRAM