Once-forgotten pits could be the most significant Indigenous archaeological site in southern Minnesota

GRAND MEADOW, MINN. – Tucked in a wooded glen among the farm fields of southeastern Minnesota lies the answer to a mystery hundreds of years old.

It's a series of pits, the remnants of an ancient Native American quarry. There, people likely gathered from hundreds of miles over thousands of years to dig up a type of flint called chert, used to make everyday tools.

The quarry was abandoned long before the first white settlers came to the Mississippi River valley, lost to Dakota oral traditions. It took decades before a landowner realized all those artifacts found in the Grand Meadow area south of Rochester meant something big happened here, and even longer before a team of archaeologists figured out what the site represented.

Even after that, the site was largely forgotten until a group launched an effort in 2019 to preserve it. Now, on the eve of its opening as a new trail, archaeologists, educators and residents alike are ready to discover more of its history.

"The more we look at it, the more [we believe] that it was probably the most significant site in southern Minnesota," said Tom Trow, a retired archaeologist who spearheaded the effort to open the quarry to the public.

The Grand Meadow Chert Quarry, or Wanhi Yukan — "there is chert here," in Dakota — will open next month as a self-guided trail system with signs and educational materials showcasing what is known about its history.

The trail, off a dirt road at 730th Avenue just north of 255th Street and the St. Finbarrs Cemetery, spans about three-fourths of a mile. It also features about 3 acres of prairie, showcasing what experts say they believe the area looked like during the quarry's peak between 600 and 1,000 years ago.

For educators, it's an opportunity to connect youth with the land's forgotten culture. Experts see the quarry as a trove of information on how Indigenous people interacted with one another. For Native Americans, its continued rediscovery is nothing short of miraculous, and its new life as a trail gives hope for the future.

"It's a heartwarming feeling," said Amanda Schramm, the American Indian Success coach at Austin Public Schools. "That's just putting it broadly. There's not really words you can put into when you're here."

Uncovering history

The earliest evidence of the Grand Meadow Chert Quarry goes back 8,000 years to tools found in Granite Falls, Minn.

Yet researchers didn't know the unique chert they've found across the Midwest over the decades — as far west as the Black Hills in South Dakota and as far east as the Great Lakes — came from Grand Meadow.

They almost solved the mystery in 1952, when landowner Maynard Green wrote to the Minnesota Historical Society asking for someone to inspect the quarry site and the hundreds of artifacts he'd found over the years. An archaeological visit ended early when a storm rolled in, however.

Archaeologists got involved in 1980 when Trow and his team were sent to Grand Meadow to meet with Green again and tour the site.

It took less than a minute for Trow and his field partner to realize there was something more to Green's plot of land.

There were almost 100 pits there, different from the typically flat farmland one would expect.

"You take one look at the landscape and go, 'Something was going on here,'" Trow said.

The team found evidence of as many as 2,000 pits over 175 acres in rural Grand Meadow, much of which had been covered over when settlers first began farming the area.

Trow and others theorize the quarry was a meeting place for villages from across Minnesota — Dakota who settled near Blue Earth and Mankato and others from Red Wing and Cannon Falls, La Crosse, Wis., and Iowa.

They mined chert by hand, digging pits 10 feet deep and 40 feet wide in some places, then used flatter hammer stones to forge the chert into scrapers, arrowheads, spear points, axes and more.

"It's sort of like stopping off last-minute at a Kmart or a Walmart to pick up things you need before you go off on a big hunt," said Franky Jackson, a historic preservation officer with the Prairie Island Indian Community.

It could have also been the social event of the season. Trow and other experts think the quarry could have been southern Minnesota's most popular dating spot for young folk to meet others — villages were small, and pickings were slim if you didn't want to marry someone you were related to.

'Ourselves reflected on the landscape'

Though its heyday began around 1000 A.D., the Grand Meadow Chert Quarry seems to have fallen out of fashion around 1400, in part because agriculture was on the rise and the quarry was running out of chert. It was forgotten.

It was all but forgotten in the modern day as well after Trow's team presented their findings. Efforts to get the Legislature to buy and preserve the land in the late 1980s and '90s failed.

The Archaeological Conservancy, a nonprofit that buys and helps preserve important sites, bought the quarry land in 1994, its first purchase in Minnesota.

The quarry went dormant once again — until 2019 when Trow started giving talks about the site and the mysteries it held.

He told the Mower County Historical Society after a talk in Austin that someone should put a trail through the site. To his surprise, the group agreed.

"Nobody knew anything about this," said Randy Forstner, the historical society's executive director. "We knew it was out here, of course, but creating a trail was something new."

Trow took charge of the project, finding grant money and working with the Prairie Island Indian Community early in the process to establish plans.

It took some time, but those partnerships paid dividends. Volunteers from Grand Meadow High School, several colleges and universities, and even inmates in community corrections programs spent several years clearing buckthorn and shaping the trails.

From there, Prairie Island worked with several other tribal communities in Minnesota, including the Lower Sioux and Mdewakanton, to help create educational signs in English and Dakota as well as establish trail stops along the way.

"We want to be able to see ourselves reflected on the landscape," Jackson said. "Having that opportunity to work with subject matter experts and language experts … was incredibly educational. We don't get this type of collaboration very often."

Standing in awe

Betty Smith, 76, and Shirley Greising, 74, didn't have much connection to their Dakota heritage for close to 50 years. Their mother, Nora, came from the Spirit Lake reservation in North Dakota, but she never mentioned her roots to her children.

The only stories Nora shared were from the boarding school she attended, Smith said.

"She died ashamed to be Native American," Smith said.

For more than 25 years, the sisters have sought to learn as much as they can about Indigenous people in the area. They founded a Dakota employee group at Mayo Clinic and were active in promoting cultural events in the Rochester area.

Touring the chert quarry on a recent Friday afternoon, the sisters and others stopped at one point to give thanks to the grandfather tree, which Prairie Island elders named for its connection to the land. Dakota residents and Indigenous educators burned sage to silently wash away any negative energy before offering tobacco and prayer ties at the tree, kneeling to pray before it.

The group was silent for several minutes, each contemplating what the new preserve means.

Marcy Averill, an Indigenous communities liaison at Carleton College, said the prayers were more than simply giving thanks.

"It's about holding that memory for us, just gratitude for this whole place and experience," Averill said.

The chert quarry will open for tours at the beginning of July. Surveying is planned with radar devices to search for new discoveries. More than 70 years after the local landowner questioned what the quarry held, even more answers about the Dakota's past may be on the horizon.

"I'm just thankful that I'm here to see it," Smith said.

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