Minnesota’s busiest state park reopens after flood cleanup
Visitors were back at Fort Snelling State Park within hours of reopening
It's been an incredibly wet year at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers.
This spring at Fort Snelling State Park, the water was more than head high on some parts of the park road, and left as much as 3 feet of silt in places, said Nick Bartels, assistant manager at the park, located just south of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
“We didn't drop down out of minor flood stage until the first or second week of June, so that's really been the challenging issue this year,” Bartels said as the first cars started to filter through the park entrance Tuesday. He said it took weeks for some areas to dry out enough to even let park crews get to them.
Floodwaters also badly damaged the park's main road and washed out the pipe that supplied water to the park toilets. The road and water main repairs alone cost nearly $200,000.
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Crews piled up about 850 cubic yards of sediment from roads and trails alone, and there are still long piles of silt and tree debris visible in parts of the park. Some trails are still marked closed as the clean up wraps up.
Bartels says the damage kept tens of thousands of people away.
“It's safe to say with how nice things were this summer, unfortunately we probably displaced up to 500,000 people that would have been here enjoying the park,” he said.
But they started coming back as soon as the park officially reopened.
William Crosby was down with his fishing pole and tackle, trying his luck on Snelling Lake this morning.
“[I] had to come right down and see what it was like,” he said, saying he’s been there almost every day in previous summers. It's about a 10-minute trip from his home in Minneapolis and he says he reels in bass, perch and the occasional northern from the park's fishing pier — although he came up empty Tuesday.
“I was using plastic worms, and then I was trying to see if real worms would work. Nothing's biting yet. Still probably too hot,” Crosby said.
Jennie Brandt was pedaling through the park and says she feels lucky to have a state park so close to her home — although she missed it this summer. “I try and get out here almost every day when it’s nice out, when it's a day like today. It's just a great place to bike,” said Brandt.
But even without a summer, staff say there's still plenty of park to enjoy.
“We're getting ready for a beautiful fall season,” Bartels said. “Our fall colors are really starting to ramp up in the park now. We're starting to see some changes in the ash trees and oak trees.”
The park is open daily from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m, free for hikers and bikers, and at no additional cost for vehicles with a $35 annual state park permit. Daily permits for vehicles are $7 a day.