Check Out the Top Four Things to Do at Mille Lacs Kathio State Park

Mille Lacs Kathio State Park is one that is flooded with history.

The park is a National Historic Landmark – spend five minutes there, and you’ll understand why. History is all around you.

An interesting note about Mille Lacs Kathio – the Mdewakanton Dakota Oyate once fully inhabited its land; “Mdewakanton” means “People of Spirit Lake,” and today, that lake is known as Mille Lacs Lake. Even cooler, one of the Mdewakanton Oyate’s creation stories says they were created at Mille Lacs Lake. There’s something special knowing you’re walking through the place a group of people believe they were created on.

Check out my top four suggestions on visiting Mille Lacs Kathio State Park below.

1. Check out the Landmark Trail.

Not only is it a beautiful trail, but it’s speckled with informative signs about the area.

The trail takes you through a one-mile loop of the park, with stops along the way to teach you about certain parts of the park’s history. If you ask me, there are one too many signs about the trees, but that’s just me. If you’re a tree-fact junkie, this trail is definitely for you.

Around one of the bends in the trail is a site where several farmsteads once were. One belonged to an unknown family, and another to the Swedbergs, whom the park seemed to know quite a bit about.

Along this trail, just up ahead, I encountered a beaver! I was pretty excited about it.

Here is blurry, low iPhone quality proof.

He’s the blurry brown smudge in the middle of the picture. He was just hanging out, chomping on some grass. I watched him for awhile, and he occasionally peeked his head up to look at me before eventually meandering away.

We crossed paths again once I got further along the trail, but this time he scurried away pretty quickly.

2. Relax and take in views of Ogechie Lake.

Even here, there is history. Maybe I should say of course there is history here, too. Sources of water are normally sources of history.

Here along the lake once stood a village of about 20 to 40 people, based on archaeologists’ findings. There were some interesting signs here that seemed to hop around the subject of European colonization of America, in my opinion. One sign stated that they knew what the homes looked like in this area, and they had found that one home was quite “different” from the others, yet it seemed to be fully incorporated in the village, and they weren’t quite sure why. A few sentences later, they stated that they had found missionary rings amongst the Native Americans’ possessions at this site. I felt like they were insinuating that eventually, a missionary had begun living in the village here, but for some reason they didn’t want to come right out and say it.

3. Visit the Interpretive Center and hike the trails near Petaga Point.

This is one thing I missed out on during my visit. As Mille Lacs Kathio is a National Historic Landmark, there are a ton of opportunities to learn about the 9,000 years of history it contains. At the Interpretive Center, you can learn all about the park’s history – though I will say you can learn quite a lot by hiking the Landmark Trail. If I were to visit Mille Lacs Kathio again, I would start at the Interpretive Center and then hike to Petaga Point.

The Interpretive Center is on the same side of the park as Petaga Point, which is an archaeological site near Ogechie Lake. Several archaeological teams have excavated the site, and uncovered many Native American artifacts. Not far from here, the Moore Family Farmstead once stood. It seems like an area packed with history, much like the rest of the park.

4. Climb the 100-foot observation tower.

As you may know, I have this thing with heights and climbing observation towers. If a state park has an observation tower, I make sure I visit it, and Mille Lacs Kathio was no exception.

The structure of the tower is super cool, and while the general idea of the towers are similar, each one is different in its own way. I also enjoy reading the graffiti people have done, and seeing who has etched their name into the cab of the tower.

The tower at Mille Lacs Kathio is only 100-feet high, but it gets you higher than the tree tops, and has a pretty view.