Lac Qui Parle State Park

This summer I did some exploring to try and help out the Minnesota Odonata Survey Project. The mission of the MOSP is to survey the odonates, dragonflies and damselflies, in the state of Minnesota. Minnesota has been behind when it comes to surveying odonates especially in the more rural areas of the state.

One area that I found had not been very well surveyed was Lac Qui Parle County which is located in western Minnesota along the South Dakota border. There were only a few species recorded in this county, as well as several others around it, so I decided to take a day and explore Lac Qui Parle State Park.

It was a long drive. It took me over 6 hours to get to the park, although I did stop in one of the neighboring counties to collect a few specimens on my way. I spent a couple of hours in the park and I came away with about a dozen new county records. One of the not so common dragonflies that I found was this Halloween pennant.

There were other things besides dragonflies for me to photograph. The name Lac Qui Parle is a French translation of the name which the Dakota Sioux gave to the lake, Mde Iyedan. The English translation is " the Lake that Talks". It was named this because of the large numbers of waterfowl, especially Canada geese, that use the lake for staging during migration. Besides the migrating geese and ducks there is also a colony of white pelicans that nest on an one acre island in the park.
Lac Qui Parle was also the sight of a Christian Mission. The mission was built in 1835 and was adjacent to a trading post owned by Joseph Renville, a half French and half Dakota fur trader and explorer. The missionaries worked to teach the Dakota Christianity and western ways. They also worked to learn the Dakota language and develop a Dakota alphabet. However when Renville died in 1846 things went down hill and the mission was abandon in 1854. The building above is a replica of the original chapel that was built back in 1940s. It is registered under the National Register of Historic Places as well as with the American Presbyterian Historical Society.