Imagine standing in this spot 150 years ago.
It would have looked very different than it does today. To the west (your left) was a rolling prairie — vast, nearly treeless grasslands. In the summer the prairie would be ablaze with colorful flowers. Across the river was a dense forest. The "Big Woods" to the north provided native people with a variety of plant foods — cranberries, chokecherries, and sugar made from the sap of maple trees. And the woods were filled with a wealth of game — deer, black bear, rabbits, and other small animals.
"The idea of space"
Easterners and Europeans were puzzled by the wide expanses of the prairie. Some early settlers believed that crops would not grow on land where trees did not grow. They homesteaded in the forest and cleared trees to make fields. Frank B. Mayer, a visiting Baltimore artist, was one of many who compared the prairie to an ocean: "The idea of space, an important element of the sublime, is the poetic attribute of the prairie," he wrote. "That peculiar charm which the ocean exerts over the mind is likewise felt on these land-seas."
Minnesota Historical Society
Traverse des Sioux
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