On Saturday, April 23, 2022, somewhere around noon I ran into some amazing people at my local fresh water spring. It is the naturalist’s of the water cooler. It is the Frederick-Miller Spring in Eden Prairie, MN. Just north of Flying Cloud Drive off the appropriately named Spring Road you will find a small piece of history and beauty of what once was. The natural spring, one of the last like it for miles and miles - especially with the quality of water it provides, is once again under attack. There is private property that surrounds a large portion of it and the owners are looking to sell for a generous profit. Granted, it is their right to sell it, but something stinks with this potential sale and it’s not coming from the spring.
The City of Eden Prairie has been adamant at not doing a proper survey of the land since the property owners, John and Carol Standal. It’s been revealed that Mr. Standal’s health is failing and the family is ready to sell the property to help support his medical issues. Their daughter, Kate Rohlfsen, has been very vocal about the method of sale of the property. There have been several private interests that have approached them to try and buy the property, but they have been turned away. The family wants over 5 million dollars for the 28 acres they own. But there is so much more to this story, than what is currently happening there.
So many interesting things have happened in this area over the last several hundred years.
The last Dakotah-Ojibwe battle happened right there on those bluffs in May of 1858. There are several organizations that are very active in trying to save this spring, the prairie, and the natural habitat that has century old trees. Through that struggle, they have uncovered a multitude of amazing historical findings in these hills. Imagine, before that tribal battle how the European settlers and Indigenous tribes used that spring for their fresh water back in the 1800’s and beyond. The City of Eden Prairie has documents that they’ve kept private of burial mounds on that property they want developed for the property tax income. They are believed to be Indigenous people burials from an anonymous source at one of the agencies that deals Indian affairs.
So many of our precious resources and points of enjoyment where we can take in nature are disappearing due to encroaching development or to poorly managed development. Riley-Purgatory Creek (the creek that the spring feeds) has been undergoing a restoration since 2017. You can find some great information about this on the Riley Purgatory Bluff Creek Watershed website. Between the City of Eden Prairie taxpayer dollars and the Lower Minnesota River Watershed District, 1.75 million dollars has been allocated to restoring this beautiful natural space. That leads me to the question then, why would the City of Eden Prairie want to allow a huge residential project to occur that would impact this allegedly protected space? The Watershed District has also been contacted regarding this issue and has not offered any protection or help to save Riley Creek. Why is this creek so important? There are very few natural ground water resources left that people can access. This spring has been used for hundreds of years and on its own is an amazing water source for people. It’s clean and clear and because of the nature of the creek and how it filters the water, it is a healthy and clean water source. More development will be a danger to the quality of water coming through the spring. The age of the natural habitat is also a big factor. Century old trees provide a much different resource than saplings just planted. Older and more mature trees provide more of a give and take in the habitat. Trees filter the air naturally. Any pollutants are taken in by the mature trees and the healthy soil. As the water flows, the roots of the trees help filter the water as well as the pristine sands and soils at the bottom of the creek. This slow and wandering creek gently flows through the land which provides a certain magical structure to the water itself and all the necessary minerals a person needs to be healthy. Once excavation starts up the hill from the creek, it will create drainage easements that release thousands of gallons into the soil that are not made to be there, and so forth you are no longer conserving anything. You have just contaminated a natural resource. Contamination has already hit the Riley Creek area due to an earlier housing project that was allowed by the City of Eden Prairie. “Riley Creek is unhealthy due to high levels of sediment in the water. There is active erosion occurring along the creek because of increased stormwater discharge. If nothing is done, the creek will continue to erode the streambanks and surrounding slopes, picking up more sediment” stated the Riley Purgatory Bluff Creek Watershed in 2017.*
All that being said, I’d like to dive back into the archaeological implications that have been discovered because of the historical battle that happened on those bluffs. Mayor Case was asked some questions from students at Shakopee High School regarding this issue. He went to the high school and spoke to this group of students that were working on a project and when they asked how he felt about the burial grounds, he responded that ‘they could just be moved.’ The teacher and the students were deeply distraught by this response. How is it that a person who sides with natural conservation principles and promotes ethnic equality would say something like that? It’s a mystery. In the construction of Flying Cloud Drive just south of Frederick Miller Spring, there were artifacts found during the excavation of the land in which they found 5,000 artifacts and 19 features that included fire pits, post holes, and other evidence of occupation of the area. It has been assessed through these discoveries that the settlements on the bluffs across the road from the spring dates back at least 1300 years. Per an article written in the Sun Current, Council-member Sherry Butcher Wickstrom asked “now that you’re adding greater information, or more information, to what our story already is or what we believe our story to be, how will you drop that in - how will you bring the bigger picture to the overall story?”** Steve Boyd-Smith, the Creative Director for the 106 Group that is handling this site stated that interpretive plan is still in the works for this site but that most likely there are several wayside posts that served as information gathering sites way back when. When information was passed mostly orally and maybe a some written as well. Boyd-Smith went on to say later in that article that ‘efforts were being made to make the findings along the Flying Cloud Drive reconstruction project fit into the larger picture of human activity along the Minnesota River.”
Wouldn’t one conclude, who has any common sense, that if there were wayside posts and other types of inhabitants living along that bluff, that they would have used the spring for their fresh water? I’m sure that’s why William Frederick, the original person as far as we know, who created the tap to the spring in order to capture it’s flow for a fresh water source in 1880. There was a beautiful article written in the publication called Water Travelers. It denotes how even before Frederick rerouted the spring and tapped it for easier use, the Indigenous people traveled there to find fresh water. In fact, the author states “The spring was known as Minewaucan or curing water.” Eden Prairie pioneer Helen Holden Anderson wrote that when the usual home remedies failed to take hold, sickly folks came down to the spring. “One had only to drink deep and often of this,” she wrote of the water, “and the sparkle would return to one’s cheeks, strength to one’s limbs, and laughter to one’s ribs.”2 Healing waters! And The City of Eden Prairie (namely the Mayor) wants to desecrate this site once again for profit. That is utterly shameful.
Resources:
* https://rpbcwd.org/whats-happening/projects/lower-riley-creek-ecological-restoration
** https://hennepinhistory.org/from-the-magazine-water-travelers/