Where Minnesota Comes Together

Where Minnesota Comes Together. . Here, at Crow Wing State Park, Minnesota's three major landscape regions come together. Few other public places in the state offer you, the park visitor, opportunities to experience Minnesota's original prairies, pine and hardwood forests at once. Here also, two rivers come together., This confluence of the Crow Wing and Mississippi Rivers is mentioned often in the area's history, for the rivers were the transportation network of ancient Minnesota., A brief look at a map will show you that Crow Wing State Park is located near the geographic center of Minnesota., Crow Wing is a unique and beautiful place, and it's yours to explore! Perhaps you, too, may come together with new friends on the trails of Crow Wing State Park, sharing in its rich heritage and natural beauty., , The vegetation that thrived here when Europeans first arrived is shown on this map. A close look at the insert map shows the special diversity of landscapes in the vicinity of today's Crow Wing State Park, including:, Prairie . Pine Forest . Hardwood Forest . Brushland . Bogs and Swamps, Generally, as can be seen on the map, the park lies in the buffer zone, or ecotone, between the western prairie and northeastern pine forest.,

There is some disagreement about the origin of the name Crow Wing. Most agree that the nineteenth-century town, the county and the state park honored the name from the river. Some claim that the river is so named because an island, prominently located here at the confluence, is shaped like a crow's wing. Others claim that the name is a mistranslation of an Ojibwe word for raven or raven feather. Still others say that the name derives from the Little Crow chiefdom and lineage of the Dakota, who inhabited this region before the Ojibwe.