Charles A. Lindbergh State Park is a 569-acre (2.3 km²)

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

state park State parks are parks or other protected areas managed at the sub-national level within those nations which use "state" as a political subdivision. State parks are typically established by a state to preserve a location on account of its natural ...

on the outskirts of Little Falls. The park was once the farm of Congressman

Charles August Lindbergh Charles August Lindbergh (born Carl Månsson; January 20, 1859 – May 24, 1924) was a United States Congressman from Minnesota's 6th congressional district from 1907 to 1917. He opposed American entry into World War I as well as the 1913 F ...

and his son

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

, the famous aviator. Their restored 1906 house and two other farm buildings are within the park boundaries. The house, a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

, and an adjacent museum are operated by the

Minnesota Historical Society The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) is a nonprofit educational and cultural institution dedicated to preserving the history of the U.S. state of Minnesota. It was founded by the territorial legislature in 1849, almost a decade before statehoo ...

, known as the Charles Lindbergh House and Museum. Three buildings and three structures built by the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

in the 1930s were named to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

. These buildings include a picnic shelter and a water tower, built in the

Rustic Style Rustic architecture is a style of architecture in the United States, used in rural government and private structures and their landscape interior design. It was influenced by the American craftsman style. According to the National Park Service, � ...

from local stone and logs, and have remained relatively unchanged since construction. Although the property includes shoreline on the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

, the Lindbergh family requested that the park not include intensive use areas for swimming or camping, so development was kept to a minimum.

History

Charles August Lindbergh, known as C.A., was a prominent lawyer and real estate trader in Little Falls. In March 1901 he married Evangeline Lodge Land, the college-educated descendant of two notable Detroit medical families, who had come to Little Falls the previous autumn as a teacher. She, C.A., and his two daughters from a previous marriage moved to a property, which C.A. had purchased for a dairy farm three years earlier. They had a three-story house built on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. A tenant's house was built across the road for the farm workers. Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born in 1902, and would be the couple's only child. A barn was built later that year, and the farm was populated with cattle, goats, hogs, sheep, chickens, and pigeons as well as cats and dogs. On August 5, 1905, a fire started for unknown reasons on the third floor. The house burned down to its stone foundation, but the Lindberghs and their servants escaped injury and managed to save many of the household items. The Lindberghs had a new house built on the foundation of the first. However it was much smaller, due to C.A.'s overextended finances and a growing strain in the marriage. The new house fit awkwardly onto the footprint of the old, necessitating a short hallway with seven doors leading off. The basement, intended as a library for C.A., and the upper floor was never finished. Instead, C.A. entered politics and in 1907 began serving the first of five consecutive terms in the

U.S. House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...

. For the next decade the younger Charles spent much of each year in Detroit and Washington, D.C., living only two or three months at the house in Little Falls. However, Charles would credit his time spent on the farm and playing along the Mississippi for his strength and self-reliance. The unfinished upper floor became Charles' exclusive play area, and upon hearing an unusually loud engine one day in 1911 he climbed out onto the roof and saw his first airplane. and Evangeline's relationship with C.A. and his daughters worsened, and in 1917 she and Charles moved back into the house year-round. Charles continued sleeping in his bedroom, which was really a screened-in porch, on all but the very coldest winter nights. He began overseeing the farm and was an early adopter of mechanization technology. Charles left in 1920 to attend college and returned only once, in 1923, arriving in his Curtiss JN-4 plane and landing in a field on the west side of the property. In the next two years the barn burned down and C.A. died, and the farm was largely neglected. After Charles Lindbergh became famous in 1927, souvenir seekers frequently broke into the empty house and caused extensive damage. Encouraged by locals hoping to see the house protected, the Lindbergh family donated the farm to the state of Minnesota in 1931 as a park in memory of C.A. The family worked with the

to restore the home, and donated many original furnishings. The Works Progress Administration developed the park for recreation. In 1969 the house and its grounds were transferred to the

. In what was to be his final public address, Charles spoke from the porch of his boyhood home at the 1973 grand opening of an adjacent interpretive center. He died the following year. The visitor center initially focused on the three generations of Lindberghs in America, at the request of the spotlight-leery Charles. However, a 2002 remodeling doubled the exhibit space and added more about the aviator himself. In 1989 the WPA developments were listed on the

as a

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

. The district contains six

contributing properties In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

—two buildings (a picnic shelter and latrine), two structures (the water tower and a retaining wall along Pike Creek), and two objects (drinking fountains near the picnic shelter). All were built between 1938 and 1939. They are considered historically significant as examples of

New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...

federal work relief and Minnesota's state park development, and architecturally significant for their

National Park Service rustic National Park Service rustic – sometimes colloquially called Parkitecture – is a style of architecture that developed in the early and middle 20th century in the United States National Park Service (NPS) through its efforts to create buildings ...

design. The same picnic shelter design was used in

Lake Bemidji State Park Lake Bemidji State Park is a state park of Minnesota, United States, on the north shore of Lake Bemidji. The northern half of the park preserves a spruce-tamarack bog. A district of National Park Service rustic structures built by the Civil ...

Park grounds

The land is glacial till deposited between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

boulders carried in by glaciers from farther north are visible in the bed of Pike Creek. The vegetation remains similar to its pre-settlement composition of pine forest with oak and prairie openings. Damming has raised the water level of the Mississippi substantially from the days when Charles Lindbergh swam in it. The park has a campground with 38 sites, 15 of those with electrical hookups. There is also a group campsite that accommodates up to 30 people, one walk-in campsite, and a canoe-in site along the Mississippi River.

References

*Berg, A. Scott. ''Lindbergh''. G.P. Putnam's Sons: New York, 1998. *Franklin, Robert. "There's more Lindbergh now at his boyhood home. Little Falls center reopens with twice the space." ''Star Tribune'' August 9, 2002. *Lindbergh, Charles A. ''Lindbergh Looks Back: A Boyhood Reminiscence.'' Minnesota Historical Society Press: St. Paul, 2002. *Meyer, Roy W. ''Everyone's Country Estate: A History of Minnesota's State Parks''. Minnesota Historical Society Press: St. Paul, 1991. *Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Charles A. Lindbergh State Park signage, brochures, and website. *

External links

Charles A. Lindbergh State ParkCharles Lindbergh House and MuseumNHL summary
{{authority control 1931 establishments in Minnesota Lindbergh Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota Historic house museums in Minnesota Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota IUCN Category III Minnesota Historical Society Minnesota state historic sites Museums in Morrison County, Minnesota National Historic Landmarks in Minnesota Park buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota Protected areas established in 1931 Protected areas of Morrison County, Minnesota Protected areas on the Mississippi River Rustic architecture in Minnesota State parks of Minnesota Works Progress Administration in Minnesota Houses in Morrison County, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places in Morrison County, Minnesota

History

Park grounds

See also

References

External links