GRAND RAPIDS — The Forest History Center in Grand Rapids is expanding.
The site along the Mississippi River will soon feature nearly 200 acres of managed and unmanaged forests, wetlands and grasslands.
The Minnesota Historical Society recently purchased nearly 30 acres of land from the UPM Blandin Paper Company. The company donated the original 170 acres dedicated to preserving history in Grand Rapids, including the history of the area's logging industry, which helped form the local communities.
The new parcels of land, adjacent to the Forest History Center, will preserve the archaeological remains of a 19th-century farmstead and provide room for naturalist programming.
Site Manager Pete Malsed expressed excitement about a specific feature of the new land.
“There’s part of a pond on there that’s active with a family of active beavers, and we’re kind of monitoring their activity as they come up and take down a lot of aspen stand and then see how it changes the water levels with what they’re doing on the pond,” he said.
The new land will also create additional grazing land for the site’s two draft horse teams.
Malsed said the Forest History Center helps Minnesotans experience our shared history, and it has a special role for many locals.
“The Forest History Center’s been here for 45+ years, so a lot of the locals have been here, a lot of the locals this is the place where when they have company, when they have visitors in town they bring them here to kind of show off what we have,” he said.
