John A. Latsch State Park

John A. Latsch State Park

 

Our family at John A. Latsch State Park



John A. Latsch State Park is located on bluffs about 500 feet above the Mississippi River.  The story goes that back in the mid 1800s when the area was being settled, steamboat captains would look for the three rocky-headed bluffs, named Faith, Hope, and Charity,  to navigate up and down the river.By the 1850s, a busy steamboat landing and logging town was sprung up below the bluffs. The logging activity supplied timber for the sawmills in the newly founded town of Winona. For years, this area could only visited by the few ambitious hikers who ventured up the steep and rugged hills for a bird's-eye view of the valley below. A local businessman, John A. Latsch, bought some of these blufflands and persuaded the adjacent landowner to donate, along with him, about 350 acres to the State of Minnesota for a park in 1in 1925 for a park. Latsch loved to fish in the waters below the bluffs of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Interestingly, he later donated land to the state of Wisconsin resulting in Perrot State Park, downriver from Winona in Wisconsin.

Preparing for the 1/2 mile hike up the bluff