St. Croix State Park

About this park

St. Croix State Park, which opened in 1943, is by a wide margin Minnesota's largest state park at 33,895 acres, larger than the island of Manhattan and bigger than several U.S. national parks. The park follows 21 miles of the St. Croix River, a federally designated National Scenic Riverway, and contains the final seven miles of the separately designated Wild and Scenic Kettle River, giving it an unusually long and varied river frontage compared to nearly any other park in the state system. Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration crews built 164 surviving structures here over roughly eight years during the Depression, the single largest collection of New Deal-era buildings and infrastructure anywhere in the Minnesota state park system, including a CCC camp established at Yellowbanks that housed Company #2762 and later Company #2706. The park's five main developed areas, spread across many miles to take advantage of the park's scenic diversity, include the headquarters compound, a public campground, and three distinct group camps: St. John's Landing, Norway Point, and Head of the Rapids. With 127 miles of trails serving hikers, horseback riders, cyclists, snowmobilers, and cross-country skiers, St. Croix offers enough terrain that visitors could spend weeks exploring without repeating a route, and drive-in, walk-in, backpack, and horseback campsites give travelers a genuine range of camping styles. Evidence of Native American occupation throughout the park predates its modern development by thousands of years, and the park's sheer scale, nearly 90 minutes north of the Twin Cities via I-35, makes it as much a multi-day wilderness destination as a typical day-trip state park.