This weekend, The Wife and I were looking for someplace to use our membership to the Minnesota Historical Society or find someplace similar in nature like going to Fort Snelling and seeing some of their “historical players”. Unfortunately, we had already driven to Fort Snelling (the actual fort) before we found out that they are closed until next April due to construction that wasn’t announced on their website. As an alternative, and being nearly on the wrong side of the river already we decided to head over to “The Landing” in the Three Rivers Park District just west of Valley Fair down Shakopee way.

I had never been to The Landing or it’s previous title of “Murphy’s Landing”, but The Wife had and she had found it interesting enough to go again. The Landing is kind of a unique place due to many historical buildings (thing 1850-1890′s) from the surrounding area being moved in formed into a little historical river town. I think it may be free to just go in and walk around, but we opted for the $3 tour so we could actually get in and see the buildings and hear what the tour guide had to say about them. I found it even more interesting that these buildings were moved in from different places, so you got a taste of what it was like living at various times in the early days of Minnesota.

Most of the time they have tours available to go on, but on certain days there they have costumed “players” that act as if they were living in the time period that the building existed and can talk to them about various happenings at the time. It’s vary similar to the the trip I had to Forestville State Park, covering much of the same time period in Minnesota. If you like seeing historical things or looking into the past of Minnesota, you should probably put this place on your list… or if you are looking to spend an hour or so in the car and getting some fresh air walking around in nature it’s quite scenic too.