Joseph R. Brown Minnesota River Center

Destination Sites

What you will find: Minnesota River table, a tepee, land office, steam wagon and steamboat replicas and exhibits tell stories of the ancient River Warren, prehistoric people, Dakota natives, white settlement, and flora and fauna of the valley. There is also a Brown family room.

Services at this site: Yes

Located on Main Street in Henderson, the Joseph R. Brown Heritage Society and Minnesota River Center is an interpretive center telling the life story of the exceptional man who shaped Minnesota history and of the town he founded in 1852. It was the starting point of his Henderson to Fort Ridgely Road. His influence on early Minnesota government, relations with the Dakota Indians, and business endeavors are explained in the center, located on the second floor of the former Sibley County Courthouse built in 1879, which houses the Henderson City offices and the Henderson Community Building. This is a notable historic building.

On exhibit also is the Minnesota River Table. a full topographical exhibit of the whole Minnesota River Valley that can explain a century of change in the region.

Joseph R. Brown came to Minnesota at the age of fifteen in 1820 as a musician with the U.S. Army at what would become Fort Snelling. He lived in the Minnesota region the rest of his life, working as a trader, politician, and Indian agent. He married Susan Frenière 1816-1904), a member of the Sisseton tribe of Dakota Indians, the child of a fellow trader. Brown’s son Samuel J. Brown, who knew the Dakota language from childhood, was a government interpreter. He lived out his life at Browns Valley, a village founded by his father, which was originally given the name Lake Traverse.

Things to Do: Destination Site, Museum, U.S. - Dakota War of 1862