Join the group for a hike in Bloomington along the scenic Nine Mile Creek as it races toward the Minnesota River.
Nine Mile Creek received its name from its distance measured southwest from Fort Snelling to where the Old Shakopee Trail crossed the creek. Peter Quinn (1787-1862) and his wife, Mary Louise Findley, a Metis Cree woman he married in Winnipeg before 1824, were the first inhabitants of Bloomington. They were employed by the Federal government in 1843 to teach farming skills to the Dakota. In 1849, they were followed by William Chambers and Joseph Dean, who ran the Bloomington Ferry. In 1852, the Goodrich, Whalon, and Ames families came to the area, naming it for their home town, Bloomington, Illinois. John Baliff built a house near Nine Mile Creek and Old Shakopee Road and then built a hotel called the Half-way House, because it was half way between St. Paul and Shakopee.
Bloomington became a city on the same day that Minnesota became a state in 1858. Peter Quinn had a cabin at Camp Coldwater in 1836, moved to Bloomington in 1842, was an interpreter for the Fifth Minnesota Regiment at the Lower Sioux Agency immediately prior to the start of the Dakota uprising in 1862, and died in a Dakota ambush at the Redwood Ferry Crossing on the Minnesota River.
Directions: Take I-35W south from downtown Minneapolis to the West 106th Street exit in Bloomington, exit and go west (right) on West 106th Street to Morgan Avenue South and turn north. Continue on Morgan Avenue South past West 104th Street to Moir Park's parking lot off Morgan Ave.
Google Maps map to hike start point
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This webpage was last updated on September 25, 2015.
