Mendota / Sibley House Association

?Mendota

This wide valley intersection between the two rivers known today as the Minnesota and Mississippi has been a meeting place for people for thousands of years.

The Dakota people lived on these prairielands by the 1700s. They knew this place as ...

Mendota / Sibley House

[symbol of the Daughters of the American Revolution]

Mendota

In the language of the Sioux means the mouth of a river. Was the earliest

permanent white settlement in southern Minnesota. A pioneer center of the fur trade. Near

here were signed treaties with the ...

Mendota

The Yahara chain of lakes resulted from glacial action about 40,000 years ago. A massive ice sheet, ¼ mile thick at Madison, gouged hills and widened valleys as it moved inexorably westward. Changing climate caused the glacier to retreat leaving ...

Henry Sibley and Old Mendota

The Sibley House was built in 1836 for Henry Hastings Sibley, regional manager for the American Fur Company. The first floor was designed for business operations, and the second floor was his bachelor's residence. Two additions were made to the ...

Mendota Work Camp No. 1

The "New Deal"

During the Great Depression of the early 1930's, more than 25 percent of the nations' workforce was unemployed. One of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA employed 8.5 million people ...