Highlands of River Pointe Preserve

Where is Highlands of River Pointe Preserve?

This City of Otsego preserve is a U-shaped park that follows a large bend in the Crow River in Wright County, Minnesota. Across the river is the northern edge of Hennepin County. Crow-Hassan Preserve, managed by Three Rivers Park District, is just upstream, and the Crow River's confluence with the Mississippi is just downstream.

FMR's work in Wright County began in 2023 at Davis Farm Park on the Mississippi River. With the addition of Highlands of River Pointe Preserve, these newer restoration sites create vital links to nearby projects along the Mississippi in Sherburne County, such as Houlton Conservation Area and Bailey Point Preserve. These projects contribute to the creation of a north metro habitat node.

The public is welcome to visit the Highlands of River Pointe Preserve. Two paved trails enter the park from the neighborhood to the north, and a wide mowed trail follows the U along the edge of the site's grassland, with multiple access trails to the Crow River.

Our work here takes place on Indigenous homelands.

What's special about Highlands of River Pointe Preserve?

Highlands of River Pointe Preserve was protected through the City of Otsego's park dedication ordinance, which requires new residential developments to either pay fees to support city parks or set aside parkland near the new neighborhood. The preservation of Highlands of River Pointe saved the most beautiful and ecologically rich part of a former farmstead, which was converted to housing. 

Highlands of River Pointe follows a 2.5-mile-long Crow River meander where the stream channel makes a large bend around a "point bar." Here, the river has deposited sand and sediment over time. These sandy soils eventually gave rise to oak savannas, which have more recently transitioned to oak forests as shrubs and trees have filled their understories.

Historic aerial photographs from the 1920s show that a small oak woodland has been present on the site for many generations, with huge bur and white oak trees still standing today. As the Crow River overflowed into the floodplains over the years, rich river sediments also provided prime agricultural land, which was how the property has been used since the early 20th century. Now, those fields are the site of homes and a wide open space bursting with opportunities to improve habitat.

Our work at Highlands of River Pointe Preserve

The combination of recent construction and past agricultural use has disrupted the historic plant communities at Highlands of River Pointe Preserve, and FMR is working to restore that habitat. And, with the absence of fire, pioneering cottonwood and willow trees have established in the existing grasslands at the site.

Our restoration work will remove these trees, allowing us to seed sun-loving, native mesic prairie species and eventually conduct prescribed burns. Because a significant portion of the open space is part of the Crow River's floodplain, we'll carefully select multiple seed mixes, including species that can tolerate temporary inundation and summer droughts, too. Thankfully, the preserve has a few pockets of remnant plant communities that have persisted through all the different land uses. We'll reference these small patches of native species when designing restoration seed mixes. (See our natural resource management plan for this site.)

We'll also focus on improving the riparian habitat at Highlands of River Pointe Preserve and protecting water quality. The Crow River's banks are quite sandy, and the river's volume dramatically increases with early spring snowmelt and rain. This combination of mobile soils and high flows has led to severe erosion of the riverbanks in many areas, including the outside bend of the river across from Highlands of River Pointe Preserve. To protect the streambank in the Preserve, we'll be removing invasive woody shrubs and trees. With more sunlight and less competition, we'll be able to establish deep-rooted plants, which will serve to stabilize the bank and buffer it from high flows.

Long-term park master planning by Three Rivers Park District includes the construction of a pedestrian bridge across the Crow River at Highlands of River Pointe, which would connect the Crow River Regional Trail to trails within the preserve and paths to the north. We're excited that even more people will have the opportunity to experience this special place in the future!

See our natural resource management plan for this site.

Find out more and get involved

• Volunteer with us to restore places like this.
• Check out ways you can get involved in protecting water quality.
• Contact FMR project lead Laura Domyancich-Lee.

Partners and funders for our work at Highlands of River Pointe

This work was made possible by the City of Otsego, the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council, Wright County, and by our generous volunteers and donors like you!