Discovery Sites
How to get there: Located on Renville County Road 81, south of Sacred Heart.
What you will find: Ruins of a home, with interpretive panels.
Services at this site: Interpretation
The Joseph R. Brown State Wayside Rest displays the restored granite ruins of Brown’s home from 1862. Destroyed during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, the three-story home was a mansion compared to normal pioneer homes.
Although the Brown home was destroyed, the family was spared because Joseph Brown’s wife, Susan Frenière (1816-1904), was Dakota, a member of the Sisseton tribe of Dakota Indians and the child of a fellow trader. Brown’s son Samuel J. Brown, who knew the Dakota language from childhood, was a government interpreter. Brown came to what became Fort Snelling at the age of 15 with the U.S. Army and lived in Minnesota for the rest of his live.
Brown was a trader, an Indian agent, a politician, a promoter of a steam engine wagon for transporting goods, as well as a publisher.
Things to Do: Discovery Site, U.S. - Dakota War of 1862
