Hennepin Canal Parkway State Park

The Hennepin Canal Parkway State Park offers visitors many activities including camping, fishing, boating, horseback riding and more.
We made a visit and took advantage of the crushed rock trails to do some biking.

Along the trail you can see truss and lift bridges, including this lift bridge at lock 21.
Opened in 1907, the Hennepin Canal, formerly the Illinois and Mississippi Canal, was closed to barge traffic in 1951. The canal was used as a training ground for engineers that later worked on the Panama Canal.
The state park covers five counties.

We noticed an old white building just past lock 21 which may have been a house or warehouse provided by the Corps of Engineers to lockmen. The houses provided to them weren't wired with electricity and did not have indoor plumbing.
From Wikipedia: "Traffic on the canal was never heavy, and critics complained that it was obsolete when it was constructed and that it was too small and only fit for the early days of canaling. Many have said if the canal had been constructed in the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s or even the 1860s, as it was originally suggested, the canal would have had greater economic potential. On April 7, 1948, the Corps of Engineers issued a 'navigation notice' that put the canal on a limited service basis."
Beginning in the 1970s, plans were made to convert the canal to the recreational use it enjoys today.