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also shifting $1 million from its budget to the project.
• Foundation fundraiser Dick Brown said the effort commitment will help turn Blood Run into a destination location for eastern South Dakota on par with what Custer State Park does for the Black Hills.
• "It really will become the premier state park of the east, similar to what Custer is out here," Brown said.
• Blood Run, which was designated a national historic landmark in 1970, will be the first new property to become a South Dakota state park in more than 50 years. South Dakota added Bear Butte State Park in 1961, and legislators re-designated Palisades Recreation Area as Palisades State Park in 1973.
• South Dakota began its quest to preserve the land in 1995 when it partnered with Forward Sioux Falls and the city's chamber of commerce to acquire 200 acres on what will be the southern end of the state park.
• The state bought another 10 acres in December 2011 before teaming with the wildlife foundation and The Conservation Fund that month to buy the 324-acre Buzz Nelson farmstead for $3.5 million. This summer, the foundation bought another 60 acres of flood plain south of the property that sits just across the river from the Iowa site.
• "Now we have a contiguous parcel of land on the South Dakota side that's just over 600 acres," Hofer said.
• Officials are also looking at buying 80 acres to the west of the Nelson farm that would serve as a permanent park entrance.
• The Oneota culture wasn't a single tribe but conglomerate of groups with similar characteristics dating back to 1200 or earlier. The Oneota grew corn and other staples, hunted bison, made pottery, built circular lodges and stored perishable food underground in bell-shaped storage pits lined with grass and covered with logs or bison hides.
• Many Oneota groups settled on flood plains along rivers, and the Blood Run site eight miles southeast of Sioux Falls is likely the largest of the Oneota sites. The area was occupied in later times by the Omaha, Ponca, Ioway and Oto, and archeologists believe that many tribes can trace their lineage back to the Oneota.
• Blood Run is believed to have received its name from white settlers, perhaps because the iron-rich rocks leached into the stream on the Iowa side to give it a reddish tint.
• Iowa's Blood Run National Landmark Site across the Big Sioux River is managed by the State Historical Society of Iowa and the Lyon County Conservation Board. People can visit the site by booking guided tours through the county. It is home to Blood Run Creek and features numerous burial mounds. There are several pink

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