Dayton's Bluff, Saint Paul

Dayton's Bluff is a neighborhood located on the east side of the Mississippi River in the southeast part of the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota which has a large residential district on the plateau extending backward from its top. The name of the bluff commemorates Lyman Dayton, for whom a city in Hennepin County was also named. On the edge of the southern and highest part of Dayton's bluff, in Indian Mounds Park, is a series of seven large aboriginal mounds, 4 to 18 feet (1.2 to 5.5 m) high, that overlook the river and the central part of the city.

History

Dayton's Bluff contains remnants of the earliest inhabitants of the Twin Cities. The landmarks found in its historic district and the community around it tell the story. Indian Mounds Park preserves some of the burial sites of an early group that came to the area more than a thousand years ago.

Kaposia, a large Dakota Indian village, existed below Dayton's Bluff from the late seventeenth century until the mid-nineteenth century. Its residents lived along the river and performed their burial rites on the cliffs above. They were followed by the Metis (mixed bloods) and European-American farmers— often former Fort Snelling soldiers who tilled the land in the late 1830s and 1840s. The sacred site of Carver's Cave was destroyed by railroad construction in the 1880s.