Like anyone who grew up in Red Wing, Steve Kohn's childhood always had an enormous riverside bluff looming over everything.
But Kohn didn't know as a kid how important the natural landform they called Barn Bluff was to the history of that part of the state.
He didn't know Native Americans called it He Mni Can (pronounced heh-meh-NEE-cha) in the Dakota language, and that it was the site of burial grounds and ancient dwellings. He didn't know it was a visual reference for explorers and for riverboat navigation. He didn't know Henry David Thoreau, the famous American naturalist and writer, once visited. He didn't know the historic 1882 limekiln he climbed over as a kid had a century of sediment covering the kiln's chambers — sediment that easily could have collapsed.
Kohn, the planning manager for Red Wing's community development department, hopes it will be easier for future visitors to He Mni Can-Barn Bluff Regional Park to recognize the totality of the site's historic significance.
An effort with the city and the State Historic Preservation Office is underway to add more detail to the site's listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The amended listing would better reflect its historic importance to Native Americans, such as the nearby Prairie Island Indian Community, for thousands of years.
"For anyone who grew up here, it's always in the background, always there, this important backdrop to the community," Kohn said. "But we thought the National Register listing had some shortcomings, especially when related to Native American culture."
Recent decades have seen more tribal involvement in archaeology amid a movement to better recognize the Native American importance of historic sites. For example, in 2018 the former Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis was officially restored to its original Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska. But in 2022, the Minnesota Historical Society voted against adding "Bdote," the Dakota name of the sacred place at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, to the official name of Historic Fort Snelling.
The National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Park Service, is mostly symbolic. It lists places that are worthy of preservation. Local applicants must make informed arguments about why a certain place is historically significant. Since the program started in 1966, more than 90,000 places have been listed on the register, including more than 1,700 in Minnesota.
