Friends of the Mississippi River
Working to protect the Mississippi River and its watershed in the Twin Cities area
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Conservation Success on the Sand Coulee: A Family’s Story
A major land conservation success in the Sand Coulee of Dakota County is embedded in the Minnesota roots of the two people who initiated it, Joseph and Joanne Murnane. Thanks to the Murnanes’ love of the land, Minnesotans are receiving a major gift of seven additional acres of a rare and recovering ecosystem in the Mississippi River watershed. The land their children inherited was recently gifted to the Minnesota DNR as an addition to the Hastings Sand Coulee Scientific and Natural Area.
Both Joseph and Joanne Murnane were native Minnesotans, he from White Bear Lake and she from Bald Eagle Lake. “My father in particular was always a Minnesota chauvinist,” daughter Susan said. “He was always proud of Minnesota’s natural beauty and progressive traditions. My parents married toward the end of World War II and lived on Bald Eagle Lake for many years. My father loved the outdoors, loved to sail in Bald Eagle Lake, to camp and canoe the north country, especially the BWCA and the Quetico. Only later did he come to appreciate prairie.”
Although career demands took the Murnanes out of Minnesota from 1963 to 1970, the moves didn’t separate the family from the natural world. “We lived in western New York from 1964 to 1968 and we would sail Lake Erie and the Finger Lakes,” Susan remembered. “We would camp and canoe in the Algonquin Provincial Forest and the Allegheny National Forest. We used to go to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore regularly. We went there for the first time one of the very first years it opened to the public. Dad was so proud that the national government had the good sense to buy up those barrier islands and keep them wild (mostly).”
Mississippi River News
Whose view? From where? — June 2009
Do you recognize this view? Can you tell us something where it is or why it is significant? Tell us about it! Read more…
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Friends of the Mississippi River | 360 North Robert Street | Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101
voice: 651-222-2193 | fax: 651-222-6005 | contact
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