Myre-Big Island State Park

About this park

Myre-Big Island State Park, established in 1947 and originally named Helmer Myre State Park after the local doctor and state legislator who championed its creation, protects a genuinely distinctive mix of oak savanna, tallgrass prairie, and wetland habitat on the edge of Albert Lea. The park's namesake Big Island, an ancient, lightly disturbed forest sitting within Albert Lea Lake, gives the park an unusual island-within-a-lake geography that sets it apart from most other prairie-region Minnesota parks. Surrounded almost entirely by agricultural land, the park functions as a genuine ecological island in the modern landscape, preserving remnant prairie and oak savanna communities that have largely vanished from the heavily farmed terrain of south-central Minnesota. Albert Lea Lake and its surrounding wetlands create a quiet, sheltered feel that belies the park's location just minutes from downtown Albert Lea and the I-35/I-90 interchange. The paved six-mile Blazing Star State Trail connects the park directly to Albert Lea, giving cyclists an easy, car-free route between town and the park's 16 miles of additional hiking trails. A seven-acre group camp island accessible within Albert Lea Lake offers one of the more unusual camping settings in the state park system, accommodating up to 50 people for a genuinely isolated island camping experience, and the park's combination of birdwatching, fishing, and paddling on the lake rounds out a destination prized for its quiet, close-to-town accessibility.