Fort Snelling State Park Association

We helped save Historic Fort Snelling and helped create the State Park. Your donations will help restore the decaying historic Upper Post.

With its abundant wildlife and unspoiled natural beauty in the very heart of the metropolitan area, and with historical structures predating the establishment of the State of Minnesota by three decades, the Fort Snelling area offers uncountable opportunities for enriching our lives. It was to preserve these unique resources that our organization was founded and continues to strive. Here is how it happened: In 1956, a dire threat to Historic Fort Snelling, in the form of a proposed highway through the site, caused an outpouring of citizen support for changing the highway design and saving the old fort. With the creation in 1962 of the Fort Snelling State Park Association, (also known as the Friends of Fort Snelling), this citizensÕ movement became a permanent 501(c)(3) organization supporting all aspects of the historic site. Community leaders and ordinary citizens rallied to the cause, and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and eventually convinced the Legislature to provide the additional funding needed for the creation in 1965 of Fort Snelling State Park, which then included the site of the old fort. More recently, the Friends played a large role in raising funds and convincing the legislature to fund a new Fort Snelling State Park Visitor Center, completed in 1997. Every year our Association carries out dozens of activities in support of the Historic Fort and the State Park, from musical programs to noxious-weed removal to site cleanups to helping with the Òcandlelight skiÓ events to publicizing events at the Historic Fort, and much more. Our most important current effort is the urgent campaign to save the rapidly-deteriorating Fort Snelling Upper Post. This is the area that lies outside the old walled Historic Fort, and includes the administration buildings, Officers Row, and the remaining barracks along Taylor Avenue. These historic buildings occupy a unique and important place in Minnesota history: The induction and training of hundreds of thousands of U. S. Army recruits for the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II took place here. But these buildings are deteriorating at an increasingly-rapid rate as a result of broken windows, damaged gutters and downspouts, general neglect, and disintegrating roofs Ð a few of which have actually collapsed. Your contributions to or membership in the Friends of Fort Snelling will help us continue our campaign to preserve and protect our unique historical and natural area.