The Beaver Islands

Spread across the Mississippi River here at Saint Cloud lies a scattered archipelago known as the Beaver Islands, many islands, large and small. In nineteen thirty-four, title to the islands was acquired by the Saint Cloud State Teachers College, the school that is now Saint Cloud State University. The college turned the islands into an outdoor classroom and retreat, building cabins and pitching tents so that students could study and camp among them.

In a quietly forward thinking gesture, the college set one island apart to be left entirely alone, observed as a natural place allowed to grow and change without any human interference. Today the islands and the trail that runs along the river remain a green corridor through the city, a reminder of an era when a teachers college decided that a string of river islands was worth protecting.