Camden State Park

About this park

Camden State Park, established in 1935 from land long used informally by area residents for picnics and gatherings, protects 1,855 acres where a cool, wooded river valley cuts dramatically through the open prairie of southwestern Minnesota's Coteau des Prairies, a high plateau rising some 900 feet at its summit. The park sits atop the Altamont moraine, the second-highest and easternmost ridge of glacial till in the Coteau, with the Redwood River Valley itself carved out after the glaciers retreated as meltwater cut down through the rock, sand, and clay left behind. The valley once held the actual town of Camden, platted in 1874 and home to a general store, hotel, blacksmith shop, and sawmill-turned-gristmill by the 1880s, before the railroad bypassed the settlement in 1888 and the town faded into memory by the early 1930s. Archaeological evidence shows people hunting and fishing in this valley as far back as 8,000 years, and an American Fur Company trading post operated here in the 1830s, run by a Frenchman named LaFramboise who managed relations with local Dakota bands throughout the Coteau region. Today the park's wooded valley and surrounding prairie offer a genuine ecological contrast within a short walk: spring wildflowers like trillium and bloodroot in the woods, pasque flowers and prairie smoke on the open grassland, and brown trout stocked annually in the Redwood River alongside bass and bluegill in Brawner Lake. A spring-fed swimming pool, drive-in, horseback, and group campgrounds, and the Dakota Valley Trail's lookout point, especially rewarding during fall color, round out one of the more historically layered parks in the entire Minnesota system.