Blue Mounds State Park

Blue Mounds State Park is a state park in Rock County, Minnesota, United States, near the town of Luverne. It protects an American bison herd which grazes on one of the state's largest prairie remnants.

The state park is named after a linear escarpment of Precambrian Sioux Quartzite bedrock which, although pink in color, is said to have appeared blueish in the distance to early settlers. Parts of the cliff are up to 100 feet (30 m) high. Unusual in the surrounding prairie landscape, they are a popular site for rock climbing.

The park also preserves a 1,250-foot-long (380 m) line of rocks aligned by Plains Indians which marks where the sun rises and sets on the spring and fall equinoxes. It also has a small reservoir for swimming, the only lake in Rock County. The park's interpretive center was once the home of the author Frederick Manfred.

Four structures and one building in the park, built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The park is home to a small population of coyotes and deer as well as various birds.

In 1961, three bison were acquired from the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge in Nebraska. In 2012, the Minnesota Zoo and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources entered into an agreement to form a partnership and develop a Minnesota Bison Conservation Herd. In 2017, a bull with Yellowstone genetics was added to the herd. Diverse genetics allows for healthier populations as the park participates in the conservation of bison. The herd varies in size from roughly 65 animals in the winter to around 100 in the summer, after calves are born. To keep the population at a sustainable level, individuals are sold in a fall auction. The bison range is fenced off, and visitors are warned not to approach when these strong and unpredictable animals are near the fenceline.

According to local folklore the mound was used as a buffalo jump before European settlement, but no archaeological evidence has yet been found as verification.^{[citation needed]} The soil of the mound was too thin and boulder-strewn for farming, saving it from the plow, although it was grazed.

Parkland was originally established north of the Blue Mound for the purpose of providing work relief during the Great Depression and water recreation. WPA crews built two dams on Mound Creek, creating Upper and Lower Mound Lake — 18 acres (7.3 ha) and 28 acres (11 ha) respectively — and facilities such as picnic grounds and a beach house. The 195-acre (79 ha) Mound Springs Recreational Reserve opened in 1937. In the 1950s trees were planted around the lakes and campground. The lower dam was destroyed by flooding in June 2014, draining Lower Mound Lake, and in June 2016 the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced the dam would not be rebuilt.