Tierney Woods | A Fragment of the Ancient Big Woods

Wedged between a state highway and the sprawl of the Twin Cities, a fragment of the ancient Big Woods still stands on the bluffs above the Minnesota River. Its shaded ridges hold a forest that has nearly vanished from the state, and a history reaching back to the Dakota villages below. This is Tierney Woods, in Bloomington, Minnesota. CHAPTERS 0:00 A Scrap of the World That Was 0:40 Where Are We 1:21 The Big Woods 2:03 Above the River 2:42 The Shallow Lakes 3:20 Mni Sota Makoce 3:57 Cloud Man's People 4:36 Life in the Valley 5:16 The Oak Grove Mission 5:54 The Treaties 6:34 A Woodlot Survives 7:12 Inside the Canopy 7:50 The Steep Trails 8:27 A Forest Under Pressure 9:05 A Piece of the Old World 9:41 Closing Thoughts ABOUT THIS PLACE Tierney Woods is a natural area in Bloomington, Minnesota, part of the Hyland-Bush-Anderson Lakes Park Reserve, riding the glacial bluffs above the Minnesota River. It preserves a remnant of the Big Woods, the great maple, basswood, oak, and elm forest that once covered some three thousand square miles of the state and of which only about one percent survives. The river valley below was carved by Glacial River Warren, and its shallow lakes and terraces were Dakota homeland, Mni Sota Makoce. Cloud Man's Mdewakanton band settled nearby at Oak Grove in 1839, and the missionary brothers Gideon and Samuel Pond built the Oak Grove Mission in 1843, in a valley of corn, wild rice, maple sugar, and elm-bark lodges. The Treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota in 1851 forced most of the Dakota from this land. What the plow spared, the parks later protected, and today these steep turf trails wind through a genuine scrap of the old world, now tended against new pressures like the emerald ash borer. Music: licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY). A Fru World Explorer documentary walk. Real places, real history. @fruworldexplorer