Parks, Trails & Recreation Master Plan

4

The City, the SMSC, and Three Rivers can partner to compose a series of stories that can be told across the trail and over property lines. The SMSC has great knowledge of how their ancestors used this land and the Minnesota River Valley to sustain themselves, hunting and harvesting wild rice in the area, and what life was like in Tinta Otonwe when European settlers first made contact. There could be an informative conversation about Samuel and Gideon Pond, who were advocates for the fair treatment of Native Americans and were the first to create a Pond-Dakota alphabet, which led to the first Dakota dictionary. This story could be told as trail users watch the brothers first step off of the steamboat near Tinta Otonwe, or watch as Samuel Pond built his mission house near Faribault Springs (Wakanhdi Topa Wiwi). Three Rivers could contribute content in regard to the historic structures in The Landing, perhaps how mill workers operated the Pond Mill during

in its heyday or lively city council conversations as people tried to save the mill from demolition in the 1960’s. The City, the Shakopee Heritage Society, and the Scott County Historical Society all have great resources that can bring to life the story of the riverboats at Holmes Landing, showing people disembarking from the boats at the birthplace of modern Shakopee and the downtown district. An interesting interpretive element could be orienting people along the river, placing them in a point in history when people used the river and riverfront land in different ways based on where the trail user is geographically. They could start to see historic bridges that are no longer there materialize in front of them, an industry that relied on the river for transport move past them on the water, or see how farmers conducted post- contact European-style agriculture along the river.

Park + Trail Planning

ABOVE LEFT: LIFE IN TINTA OTONWE DURING POST-EUROPEAN CONTACT. ABOVERIGHT:OLDMILLPONDSTRUCTUREATTHE LANDING.

BOTTOM LEFT: PORTRAIT OF SAMUELW. POND

178

SHAKOPEE PARKS, TRAILS, AND RECREATION MASTER PLAN | PARK + TRAIL PLANNING