Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Bassett Creek)

Creator: Crystal Boyd

A narrow river with algae and leaves is surrounded by bright green trees and bushes. In the distance, a bridge sits above the creek with blue sky and clouds in the background.

The confluence of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Falls Creek; Bassett Creek) and Ȟaȟá Wakpá (Falls River; the Mississippi River). Photo by Sean Gosiewski, 2023. Used with permission.

The first creek that connects with the Mississippi River above St. Anthony Falls is known in Dakota as Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Falls Creek) and in English as Bassett Creek. Since 1851, changes in land use along the creek have reflected a shift from the Dakota tradition of sustainable practices to an industrial model that rerouted and polluted the water. Both of these worldviews continue to shape the creek in the twenty-first century.

Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ begins at Medicine Lake in Plymouth and flows for about 13.5 miles before connecting with the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The watershed surrounding the creek includes tributaries and parts of nine cities: Crystal, Golden Valley, Medicine Lake, Minneapolis, Minnetonka, New Hope, Plymouth, Robbinsdale, and St. Louis Park. Its drainage area covers thirty-nine square miles.

The main stem of the creek travels through glacial outwash plains and a deep valley that was cut in the bedrock by the interglacial Mississippi River. Soils near the creek are often spongy and water-soaked, especially in the eastern section known as Bassett Creek Valley.

By 5,000 years ago, the watershed was covered with deciduous forests and prairie openings, including oak savanna and elm, ironwood, and basswood trees. Abundant wildlife lived nearby, including wolves, deer, otters, and eagles.

The watershed is part of the homelands of the Dakota people. For millennia it supported sustainable uses like seasonal hunting, fishing, and gathering. Dakota people walked footpaths that connected the creek with Bde Maka Ska and Ȟaȟá Wakpá.They also used the creek to transport furs by canoe. Dakota children played and swam at the mouth of the creek, and a Dakota woman named Háza Íŋyaŋke Wíŋ operated a canoe ferry above the falls in the mid-1800s.

Many names have been used to describe the creek: first, Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Dakota), and then Petite Riviere des Chutes (French). The Dakota phrase shows Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ’s relationship to both Ȟaȟá Wakpá (Falls River; the Mississippi) and Owámniyomni (Turbulent Waters; St. Anthony Falls). Early maps simply labeled it Brook, Fall Creek, or Nine Mile Creek.

White settlers staked claims near the creek before the 1851 treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux. Squatters lived on the Fort Snelling Military Reservation until 1855, when an act of Congress granted pre-emption rights. Businessman Joel Bean Bassett squatted illegally at the mouth of the creek in the early 1850s, leading schoolteacher Mary Augusta (Scofield) Kissell to name the creek after him at about the same time. Bassett became Hennepin County’s first probate judge in 1852 and the Indian Agent at Crow Wing in 1866.

The health of Bassett Creek deteriorated rapidly after the area was opened to settlers, who used it as a dumping ground as they industrialized Minneapolis. Raw sewage was piped into the waterway in the 1870s, and the creek was considered an open sewer by the late 1800s. Due to frequent flooding, the eastern portion of the creek was covered and tunneled underground in 1923.

The Works Progress Administration attempted to restore parts of the creek during the 1930s, but new approaches to watershed health began in earnest during the late 1960s. The Bassett Creek Flood Control Commission, established in 1969, adopted its first management plan in 1972. Citizens became interested in more holistic improvements, and the flood control commission reorganized as the Bassett Creek Watershed Management Commission in 1984. Flooding remained an issue, and $28 million of federal funds supported developing a new tunnel through three phases in 1979, 1990, and 1992. Starting in 1992, the creek began flowing under downtown Minneapolis and discharged into the Mississippi River downstream of St. Anthony Falls.

In the 1930s, public housing like Sumner Field Homes was built in the eastern portion of the watershed in Near North Minneapolis, where soggy soils caused building foundations to crack and sink. People experiencing poverty lived there because the unstable ground made housing less expensive. In 1998, after the settlement of a 1992 lawsuit, the Sumner Field Homes were demolished. The city was ordered to redevelop the area, and wetlands were restored in the creek’s original basin.

In 2014, a Superfund site was designated along the creek in Minneapolis, where a metal plating facility had polluted the soil and groundwater. That same year, the City of Golden Valley drafted a feasibility report for improvements to the creek’s main stem.

Later efforts recognized the creek as a Dakota landscape. In 2021, the Ȟahá Wakpádaŋ / Bassett Creek Oral History Project began working with cultural advisors to raise awareness of the creek’s Dakota name, and in 2025, the Bassett Creek Watershed Management Commission published a map celebrating Dakota culture and language.

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Boyd, Crystal. "Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Bassett Creek)." MNopedia, Minnesota Historical Society. https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/haha-wakpadan-bassett-creek

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First Published: November 19, 2025

Last Modified: November 19, 2025

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https://treaties.okstate.edu/treaties/treaty-with-the-chippewa-of-the-mississippi-1867-0974

University of Minnesota Board of Regents. The Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota: The Tenth Annual Report, For the Year 1881. Board of Regents, 1882.
https://archive.org/details/annualreportgeo06unkngoog/page/n258/mode/2up?q=%22bassett%27s+creek%22

Upham, Daniel M. “Creek Adds Problem for Redevelopers.” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, May 25, 1958.

US Army Corps of Engineers. Bassett Creek Watershed, Hennepin County, Minnesota, Feasibility Report for Flood Control, Appendices. AD–A119394. US Army Engineer District, St. Paul, 1976.
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA119394.pdf

US Congress. House. Appropriations for Chippewa Indians. Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, submitting estimates of appropriations required for the different bands of Chippewa Indians in Minnesota. H.R. Exec. Doc. No. 228. 40th Cong., 2nd sess. (1868).
https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2782&context=indianserialset

Valley Community Presbyterian Church. “Land Acknowledgment.”
https://valleychurch.net/land-acknowledgement

Warner, George E., and Rev. Edward Duffield Neill. History of Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis: Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, by Rev. Edward D. Neill, and Outlines of the History of Minnesota, by J. Fletcher Williams. Minneapolis, 1881.
https://archive.org/details/cu31924006600484/page/374/mode/2up

Wellington Management. Bassett Creek Valley District Plan Vision, ca. 2021.
https://wellingtonmgt.com/uploads/220221_Bassett_Creek_Valley_Vision.pdf

White, Bruce. They Would Not Be Moved: The Enduring Struggle of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe to Keep Their Reservation. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2024.

“Village Charter Amendment.” Mankato Weekly Record, March 16, 1867.
https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081077/1867-03-16/ed-1/seq-1

WSB & Associates, Inc. “Feasibility Study: DRAFT 2015 Bassett Creek Main Stem Restoration Project.” Prepared for the City of Golden Valley, 2014.
https://www.bassettcreekwmo.org/application/files/9414/4693/2398/FeasibilityReport-2015MainStemRestoration-2015CIP-GV-18June2015Mtg.pdf

Wurzer, Cathy, and Leah Lemm. “Bassett Creek Oral History Project Will Be First Gathering of Suburban Indigenous Stories in US.” Minnesota Public Radio News, June 24, 2024.
https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2024/06/24/bassett-creek-oral-history-project-will-be-first-suburban-indigenous-stories-in-us

Related Resources

Secondary

Johnson, Daniel Morley. "Reflections on Historical and Contemporary Indigenist Approaches to Environmental Ethics in a Comparative Context."Wicazo Ṡa Review 22, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 23–55.

Web

Febria, Catherine. "Water is Life: Reframing Indigenous Partnerships in Water Stewardship and Research in the Great Lakes." Great Lakes Connection (International Joint Commission), July 14, 2020.
https://ijc.org/en/water-life-reframing-indigenous-partnerships-water-stewardship-and-research-great-lakes

Related Images

Black and white map of the area near Bde Maka Ska, including rivers, St. Anthony falls, forested areas, and paths.

A map of the region near Bde Maka Ska created by Samuel or Gideon Pond that shows the location of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ, labeled as “Brook,” ca. 1835. From Two Volunteer Missionaries Among the Dakotas (Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society, ca. 1893), 46. See also the color-corrected version at "Lake Calhoun or Bde Maka Ska?" (Colin Mustful, May 6, 2019).

White chart depicting the interglacial channel of the Mississippi River and Bassett’s Creek in blue. Includes depth, scale, and types of soil and rock underneath the streets and water.

A cross-section showing geology and glacial drift in Bassett Creek. From Neil C. Gustafson, “Bassett's Creek: A Case Study of the Changing Concepts in Urban Land Use,” 1959, 5. Available at the Minnesota History Center library as F613 .M68B3 .G8.

White and blue map of Bassett Creek and surrounding land outlining former Indian trails and marsh, as well as streets within Minneapolis city limits.

A detail from a map of the eastern portion of Bassett Creek Valley, 1880. Included is a walking trail used by Dakota people on the south side of the creek. From Neil C. Gustafson, “Bassett's Creek: A Case Study of the Changing Concepts in Urban Land Use,” 1959, 7. Available at the Minnesota History Center library as F613 .M68B3 .G8.

Sepia “M’Dewakanton Country” map depicting the Mississippi River and its tributaries, lakes, and rivers in the region.

Black-and-white photograph of Joel Bean Bassett in his seventies. He is wearing a three-piece suit and bowtie and frowning, looking past the photographer to the left side of the image.

Black-and-white photograph of a spring at Bassett Creek in the foreground and a sign that reads “Inglewood Park and Springs.” Behind the creek is a white wooden house and a grassy hill with trees and a trail.

Lightly sepia-toned photograph showing a wooden dam in Bassett Creek. Around the creek and dam are dirt paths, bare trees and wooden houses in the background.

Lightly sepia-toned photograph of eleven young boys, wet from swimming, in bathing suits climbing a wooden ledge on a bridge over a creek. In the background, the creek flows underneath the bridge, surrounded by trees.

Lightly sepia-toned black and white photograph of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Bassett Creek) curving through a field with a baseball diamond. White houses and tall, dark trees line the background.

A black-and-white photograph depicting a young man walking across a bridge over Bassett Creek. The bridge is made of single, connected wood planks along with a rough wood handrail.

Black and white photograph of a construction site along a creek. Six workers lay wood, stone, and stakes in the creek, while two onlookers watch from the land next to the water.

Black-and-white photograph of a glassy portion of Bassett Creek curving inside Theodore Wirth Park against a grass field. Trees line the creek and the background against a cloudy sky.

Black-and-white photograph of a man and three young children in a canoe, paddling through glassy water in a flooded street. Water is up to the first few feet of the two utility poles and four buildings in the photo; two men in the background wade through water up to their knees.

Color photograph of a couple paddling a canoe through a creek, heading under a wooden bridge. Grassy shores line the river with rocks underneath the bridge’s entrances.

Color photograph depicting developments along one side of a creek: on the left side of the photo, trucks and cars are parked on dirt. The right side is green and grassy with plenty of young spruce trees and larger oak trees in the background.

In the bottom right corner of this color photograph, the bow of a bright yellow kayak points forward, floating on an algal creek. In the background, a bridge stretches above a dark brick outlet to the creek, surrounded by trees and plants.

White map depicting blue lakes, rivers, ponds and watersheds between Plymouth and Minneapolis, Minnesota. The specified land is green, and restoration projects are depicted in orange circles and lines.

A map of Capital Improvement Program (CIP) and stream restoration projects in the Bassett Creek watershed, 2019. From “Bassett Creek Watershed Management Commission Fiftieth Anniversary, 1969–2019,” 11.

White map depicts waterways in blue, described by their Dakota names in black text. The region depicted lies between Mni (Iyá) Tanka (Lake Minnetonka) and Mni Sota Wakpá (Minnesota River); a red outline surrounds Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ as an area of focus.

Color map depicting biomes surrounding Bassett Creek, the boundary of which is defined by a large red oval-shaped line. On the map, Bassett Creek (Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ) and other bodies of water are blue; big woods are dark green; savanna is light green; prairie is orange; and wetlands are a light blue overlay.

Color map depicting the cities that lie along the path of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Bassett Creek). Bodies of water are blue, and each city is depicted in either yellow, orange or pink to distinguish against other city boundaries.

A map of the member cities of the Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Bassett Creek) watershed. From “Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ / Bassett Creek Watershed Map & Guide,” Bassett Creek Watershed Management Commission, 2025.

Confluence of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ and Ȟaȟá Wakpá

The confluence of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Falls Creek; Bassett Creek) and Ȟaȟá Wakpá (Falls River; the Mississippi River). Photo by Sean Gosiewski, 2023. Used with permission.

Articles

https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/ȟaȟá-wakpádaŋ-bassett-creek

Region near Bde Maka Ska, ca. 1835

Articles

https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/ȟaȟá-wakpádaŋ-bassett-creek

More Information

https://archive.org/details/twovolunteers00pondrich/page/46/mode/2up https://www.colinmustful.com/lake-calhoun-or-bde-maka-ska

Interglacial Mississippi River and drift

Holding Location

https://mnpals-mhs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01MNPALS_MHS/ge68j0/alma990016456960104294

Wikimedia Commons

Articles

https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/ȟaȟá-wakpádaŋ-bassett-creek

More Information

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bassett_Creek_outlet_to_the_Mississippi_River,_September_2008.jpg

Articles

https://www.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/place/ȟaȟá-wakpádaŋ-bassett-creek

More Information

https://www.bassettcreekwmo.org/application/files/4017/3739/3834/2025_watershed_map_FINAL_for_WEB.pdf

From Sustenance to Leisure on Minnesota Land The Land, Water, and Language of the Dakota, Minnesota’s First People Minneapolis Aquatennial Near North African American Community, Minneapolis Oak Savanna The Ojibwe: Our Historical Role in Influencing Contemporary Minnesota Treaty of Mendota, 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, 1851

Turning Point

After the Treaty of Mendota and the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851, settlers move west of the Mississippi River. They degrade Bassett Creek to the point of it being an open sewer by the 1870s.

Chronology

15,000 years before present

Melting ice from a glacier west of modern-day Minneapolis forms Lake Bassett, which eventually fills with sediment. The area becomes a marsh with a creek flowing through it that connects modern-day Medicine Lake to the Mississippi River.

1835

Gideon and/or Samuel Pond create the first known written map of the creek and surrounding areas.

1851

Treaties signed at Mendota and Traverse des Sioux significantly reduce Dakota lands and allow non-Native people to settle west of the Mississippi River.

1866

The creek floods, impacting residents and businesses in the floodplain. Numerous floods occur over the years, including 1892, 1903, 1913, 1942, 1974, 1975, and 1987.

1923

The eastern portion of the creek is covered with concrete, tunneled for 1.5 miles, and discharged into the Mississippi River.

1969

Nine cities adopt a joint powers agreement to establish the Bassett Creek Flood Control Commission.

1972

The Bassett Creek Flood Control Commission develops its first watershed management plan.

1976

The US Army Corps of Engineers reports that the tunnel built in 1923 is unable to adequately handle storm water and poses a flood risk to more than 450 homes and eighty businesses.

1992

To reduce flooding, the US Army Corps of Engineers completes a 1.7-mile tunnel that routes the creek under downtown Minneapolis and empties into the Mississippi River downstream of St. Anthony Falls.

1995

After decades of concentrating public housing on unstable soils in the watershed’s eastern portion, the City of Minneapolis and its co-defendants settle the lawsuit Hollman v. Cisneros.

2000

The City of Minneapolis creates the Bassett Creek Valley Master Plan. It proposes redeveloping 230 acres of largely industrial space into housing, businesses, and open space along a restored creek.

2006

Hennepin County publishes a feasibility study with community input that identifies priority areas for daylighting Bassett Creek, Bridal Veil Creek, and Shingle Creek.

2021

Valley Community Presbyterian Church works with Indigenous cultural advisors to start the Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ / Bassett Creek Oral History Project.

2023

Community partners host the First Annual Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ Water Blessing along the creek in Golden Valley.

2024

The Bassett Creek Watershed Management Commission adopts a co-naming policy for using both Dakota and English names for the creek. In 2025, it publishes a map featuring Dakota language and culture in the watershed.

Bibliography

——— . “Creek Co-naming Practices.”
https://mail.bassettcreekwmo.org/application/files/5117/3706/7903/Equity_Related_Policies_and_Practices.pdf

——— . “Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ / Bassett Creek Watershed.”
https://www.bassettcreekwmo.org/application/files/3217/5260/4766/Watershed_map_1-21-25_not_password_protected.pdf

——— . Map of the Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ / Bassett Creek Watershed.”
https://www.bassettcreekwmo.org/application/files/4017/3739/3834/2025_watershed_map_FINAL_for_WEB.pdf

Related Resources

Secondary

Johnson, Daniel Morley. "Reflections on Historical and Contemporary Indigenist Approaches to Environmental Ethics in a Comparative Context."Wicazo Ṡa Review 22, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 23–55.

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Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ (Bassett Creek)

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Related Images

Confluence of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ and Ȟaȟá Wakpá

Articles

Region near Bde Maka Ska, ca. 1835

Articles

More Information

Interglacial Mississippi River and drift

Holding Location

Map of Ȟaȟá Wakpádaŋ with a Dakota walking trail

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Map with “Fall Creek”

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Joel Bean Bassett

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