The Minnesota River may not be a daily focus for many, but it identifies those who live near it.

“The river weaves its way into most all of our history,” said Ben Leonard, director of the Nicollet County Historical Society.

“When people do stop and think about it, I think the river means a lot to the soul of the people and the communities. I think that resonates with people.”

The 325-mile-long river is often out of sight and mind for those who live and work near it. Much of it meanders deep into the woods, quiet and out of sight. When it’s visible along the river towns, it’s often not a focal point — hidden by flood walls, a place to pass over via bridge.

But every few years, when the tributaries from the Pomme de Terre to the Blue Earth release torrents of water, the Minnesota River takes center stage, flooding communities and demanding respect.

10 years later

For much of the 20th century, the Minnesota — once called the “Forgotten River” — was neglected, treated as a place to dump trash, chemicals and get rid of water from the landscape.

But that changed in the 1990s when the Minnesota gained state and national attention and became the focus of the nation’s largest river reclamation project.

Those who are closely connected to and study the river say many indicators show improvement in the past decade or so, while many goals for improving it remain unmet.

The Minnesota had been labeled as one of the dirtiest rivers in the United States. The river still carries high loads of dirt particles that produce a variety of problems all the way to the ocean.

The fertilizer, human waste and other nutrients carried along with that dirt flows down the Mississippi and adds significantly to the so-called Dead Zone at the Gulf of Mexico, where plants and aquatic life are unable to live.

The dirt from the Minnesota River is also the top cause of sediment loading in Lake Pepin.

In 1992, then Gov. Arne Carlson stood on the banks of the Minnesota at Mankato and unveiled an ambitious plan to clean up the river within 10 years. The high-powered political focus brought hundreds of millions of dollars of federal and state money and honed attention on improving the massive watershed that drains much of southern Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas.

The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program pumped more than $200 million into the basin to purchase more than 100,000 acres of sensitive land along the river to restore it to grass and prevent erosion.

It made it the nation’s largest river restoration project.