Lake Bemidji State Park

About Lake Bemidji State Park

The park is an ideal playground in all seasons, offering visitors the opportunity to swim, cycle, hike, picnic and do other outdoor activities all year round. Hikers can explore the beautiful lake, which is lined with distinctive ladies shoes, sunflower-eating insects and a variety of birds and reptiles.

From one area to the other, a 400-metre-long promenade leads visitors to observe the sunflower - insect-eating plant. Most flowers bloom in late spring and early summer on the heathlands, but the park also hosts a variety of wild flowers and shrubs, as well as many bird and reptile species. Located in a pine moraine region of Minnesota, the park is home to the largest number of pine trees in Minnesota and the second largest pine forest in North America.

As a result of the last phase of glaciation in Minnesota, the parkland is embedded. Sand, gravel and rock material that glaciers carried along on their way south were settled when the ice receded 10,000 years ago. The meltwater from the glaciers has also played a role in shaping the land, and the hilly topography of the park has been created by uneven deposits from glacier management.

Lake Bemidji is the result of the ice left behind by the retreating glaciers. Many swamps and moors in the park were formed when chunks of ice separated from the retreating glacier, leaving sinks that were later filled with water.

The diversity of vegetation in the park supports many animal species, with a variety of birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, birds of prey and reptiles. Birds are a popular activity where amateur gardeners discover new plant species, such as the rose-billed bird and the redlegged.

Grebes, eagles, herons and even ospreys can be seen around the lake, and hikers often encounter deer, porcupines, squirrels and chipmunks, or even spot the occasional black bear.

For centuries, the ancestors of the Dakota Indians fished and hunted on Lake Bemidj, and visitors can spend the evening picnicking on the lake's sandy beach or in the park's picnic area with picnic tables, picnic benches and picnic chairs.

Early records from traders identify Lake Bemidji as Lac Traverse, which means diagonal in French, but there is no indication of a Mississippi passage through the lake. The westward-moving Anishinabe reached the area later in the 1750s, and there is no evidence of the Mississippi crossing the lake. In the 19th century, the Anishinabe knew him as "bemiji - gau - maug," which means "cut sideways or diagonally," according to one of the earliest records.
At the height of logging at the turn of the century, it was the centre of a blockade. European immigrants moved to the region to harvest the best white pines, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The foundations of a mill are still visible on Nymore Beach, and divers have found scattered logging artifacts in the lake. When the government bought the land, the area around the boundaries of the park was in an unspoiled state, preserving the high forest that has been so common in recent years.

Lake Bemidji was established as a national park by the Minnesota Legislature in 1923, and the park's entrance is on County State Aid Highway 20.