Destination Sites
How to get there: Located in Redwood Falls.
What you will find: The park serves as a focal point for community events, festivals and summer activities and features campground facilities, shelter houses, four miles of paved hiking trails, a DNR trout stream, scenic overlooks, and a zoo.
Services at this site: Yes
Ramsey Park is the largest municipal park in Minnesota with 219 acres. The park was first built as a state park in 1911.
The park is enhanced by 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps shelters and bridges and picturesque Ramsey Falls. It also features the Swayback Bridge.
In the lower part of the park is a variety of picnic and play areas. The lower camping shelter, built during the CCC era, is a favorite for family gatherings and picnics. Setting just a few yards from the Redwood River and next to the recently improved play area, ball diamond, campground and zoo, it is a spectacular central location for meetings of all kinds.
The park is named for Alexander Ramsey, formerly a congressman from Pennsylvania, appointed Minnesota’s first territorial governor in 1849. In 1851, Alexander Ramsey was one of the federal negotiators of the Treaty of 1851, signed at Traverse des Sioux, which effectively began the process of exiling the Dakota people from their homelands in Minnesota. In 1860 he was elected the state’s governor. In 1862, in the midst of a tragic time for Dakota people, he called for their extermination or exile from Minnesota. As governor he made every effort to accomplish that purpose. The naming of this park in Ramsey’s honor is a painful reminder for Dakota people of all that Ramsey did.
The Dakota name of the park, Caŋ ŝa yapi means “where they paint the trees red”. Signage of the name was added to the park in 2018.
Things to Do: Destination Site, Outdoor Activities
