Clearing the Land, Making a Home

Clearing the Land, Making a Home. . , The Big Woods , When the first Euro-American settlers came to this area in the 1850s, the land looked very different than it does today. At that time, the spot where you now stand would have been near the center of a two-million-acre hardwood forest that the French fur-traders called "Les Bois Grand" - "The Big Woods.", Once opened for settlement, the Big Woods quickly attracted many pioneer farmers. Its trees provided abundant fuel and building materials, while the rich soil of the forest floor was ideally suited for agriculture once the trees were cleared., Watercolor, c. 1855. "In the Big Woods between Carver and Glencoe" , Courtesy, Minnesota Historical Society, Farming the Big Woods , This historic map shows the area of Carver Park Reserve as it looked in 1880. By that time, all of the land around you had been divided into lots and sold for agricultural development. Wendelin Grimm purchased his nearly 160 acres of land in 1857. Like many of his neighbors, he immediately began clearing the landscape for planting. It would take roughly 30 years of backbreaking work to transform this tract of Big Woods forest into a productive farm., Given its widespread use as farmland, only a fraction of the Big Woods forest landscape remained when Three Rivers Park District established Carver Park Reserve in 1964.