Grand Meadow Quarry Archeological District

The Grand Meadow Quarry Archaeological District in Mower County, Minnesota is a 170-acre historic district which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.[1] The principal site within the District is The Grand Meadow Chert Quarry (21MW8). The original quarry was recorded as being 170 acres, now mostly under land plowed or developed, but a pristine 8-acre remnant of the original quarry still exists in a small woods, alongside 5 acres of restored prairie. That portion of the site, purchased by The Archaeological Conservancy as an archaeological preserve, is being developed for public access with a self-guided walking tour by the Prairie Island Indian Community and the Mower County Historical Society.[2]

The chert quarry, first identified by Grand Meadow resident Maynard Green, was an Indigenous open-pit mine with perhaps as many as two thousand pits that were dug using handheld tools. These pits were dug in order to extract nodules of "Grand Meadow Chert," a stone used by Native Americans to make many everyday tools, including spear points, arrowheads, drills, knives and hide scrapers. The earliest known use of Grand Meadow Chert is from a bison kill near Granite Falls (21YM47), in a context that was C-14 dated to 7700-8000 B.P.[3] This microcrystalline tool stone can range in color from olive gray to light yellow gray to very light gray.[4] This quarry is the only known culturally utilized source for Grand Meadow Chert, which has been found at archaeological sites in 52 counties in Minnesota.[5]