Not Just Another Wooded Lot - The Big Woods and Watten Ponds
- admin0129213
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
There is a particular quiet you feel when you step into a remnant of Minnesota’s Big Woods. The air changes. The light softens. Sugar maples rise in tall, patient columns. Basswood leaves flicker overhead.
That is not just “a wooded lot.” That is history.
During early European settlement of this continent, French traders referred to the more than 2,000 square miles of hardwood forest in what is now south-central Minnesota as the “Big Woods.” Not only was the forest vast, but the trees that grew there were huge (or “big”)! Today, all that remains of The Big Woods are scattered parks and woodlots
Diorama Spotlight: Big Woods, Bell Museum, University of Minnesota
The Watten Ponds property sits within what was once part of Minnesota’s Big Woods ecosystem — a vast maple-basswood forest that stretched across much of south-central Minnesota before statehood. Before roads. Before subdivisions. Before lawn edges and retaining walls. Early surveyors wrote about riding for miles under uninterrupted canopy.
Today, that ecosystem is almost entirely gone.
More than 98 percent of the original Big Woods has been cleared, fragmented, or converted. What remains are islands. Patches. Edges where forest once rolled without interruption. And when you lose continuity in a forest like this, you do not just lose trees. You lose soil systems that took centuries to develop. You lose groundwater recharge patterns. You lose habitat corridors that allow wildlife to move safely between wetlands and uplands. You lose resilience.
Watten Ponds is not an isolated stand of trees. It is part of a larger, still-functioning ecological fabric — a network of woods and wetlands that connect to one another and ultimately drain toward a wetland complex that is part of Lake Minnetonka. The three wetlands on the property are not decorative features. They are working pieces of a hydrologic system. They store water. They filter sediment. They slow spring melt and summer rains. They prevent flooding and buffer the lake.
Other Minnesota cities and counties recognize the historic and ecological value of the Big Woods and are investing public money and effort to protect these rare natural assets, read about Wayzata's enlightened approach and Dakota County's protection of its environment.
In a forested wetland system like this, water does not simply run downhill and disappear. It lingers. It seeps. It spreads through root networks and peat layers and soil structures built over generations. When those systems are disturbed — when grading changes flow paths, when canopy is removed, when compaction alters infiltration — the consequences move outward.
Fragmentation is not dramatic at first. It looks like a driveway. A lawn. A cleared pad between trees. But fragmentation changes temperature. It changes light. It introduces invasive species. It reduces interior habitat and expands edge conditions. The Big Woods did not evolve as edge habitat. It evolved as depth.
And this site matters precisely because it is in the middle. Not at the fringe of development. Not already surrounded by pavement. It functions as connective tissue between larger wooded parcels and wetland systems. When connective tissue is cut, ecosystems do not fail all at once. They slowly unravel.
Wonder about the endangered species in the Big Woods? Read the DNR Big Woods report.
There is also the water question. The onsite wetlands are part of a larger wetland system that is a vital part of Lake Minnetonka. Water leaving this site does not stop at a property line. If hydrology is altered here — even subtly — that change travels. Increased peak flows, reduced storage, or sediment movement do not remain neatly contained within surveyed boundaries.
This is why people are asking for careful review. Not because growth is inherently wrong. Not because change is forbidden. But because places like this are rare, unique. The Big Woods are not coming back at scale. Once mature canopy and wetland soil systems are disturbed, they cannot be reconstructed in any meaningful ecological timeframe.
When you walk through these woods today, you are walking through what Minnesota used to look like. That is not sentimentality. That is ecology. It is memory embedded in landscape.
Watten Ponds is not just a development question. It is a fragmentation question. A watershed question. A legacy question. It sits in the middle of something larger than itself — a shrinking remnant of a forest that once defined this part of the state.
And when something is almost gone, the bar for altering what remains should be higher, not lower.
More Resources
Learn about the Big Woods at the Bell Museum.
* Read about the value of rare Big Woods wetlands for water quality and as buffers against flooding from the DNR, "In addition to the biological diversity wetlands add to the Big Woods, they also play vital roles in the water cycles of the region. With their draining and filling in modern times, flooding has increased in severity at substantial cost to society."
* To understand why the Big Woods are so important for endangered species, read the DNR report on the Big Woods:
* Learn more about the Big Woods from the DNR:
For a more visual experience:
* See the Big Woods display that's part of the Landscape Arboretum's Spring Flower Show going on right now in Chan.
* Visit the permanent Big Woods diorama at the Bell Museum.
Visit the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to learn more about Big Woods species.
