Big Stone Lake State Park

About this park

Big Stone Lake State Park, established in 1961 at the urging of local Ortonville business owners concerned about unchecked lakeshore development, protects two separate sections of shoreline on Big Stone Lake, a 26-to-30-mile-long lake straddling the Minnesota-South Dakota border and the source of the Minnesota River. State Auditor Ray Chase had specifically flagged this region as underserved by the park system back in 1923, and it took nearly four decades for that recommendation to translate into an actual park. The park's northern Bonanza Area includes a picnic ground, boat launch, primitive group camp, and the Big Stone Lake Environmental Education Center, alongside 30 acres of rare glacial till hill prairie protected as a Scientific and Natural Area; the southern Meadowbrook Area, where the park office sits, offers a full campground, swimming beach, and hiking trails. The lake itself traces back to the southern end of ancient glacial Lake Agassiz, and the surrounding granite and gneiss outcrops still contain fossilized shark's teeth exposed in the top few inches of stone, a genuinely striking reminder of the deep geologic time embedded in this prairie landscape. Fishing draws steady visitors for walleye, northern pike, bluegill, and crappie in the lake's clear water, and the park's position along the Minnesota River Country Landscape Region, once tall and mixed-grass prairie now largely converted to farmland, makes its remaining prairie remnants ecologically significant. Birders have documented more than 200 species here, including marbled godwits and Forster's terns, particularly during spring and fall migration through the Bonanza Area.