In Austin, advocates turn Cedar River into recreation destination

Tim Ruzek loved to bike around the waterways growing up in Austin, exploring where Turtle Creek met the Cedar River. But he wasn’t a fan of the water, which back in the day was filled with mud and gunk he didn’t want to touch.

Nowadays, the former newspaper reporter-turned-outreach coordinator for the Mower County Soil and Water Conservation District is seeing more people who want to get in the water after more than a decade’s worth of work trying to boost recreational activities along the river.

“That’s why we’re doing this,” Ruzek said. “It’s a really beautiful corridor. A lot of people don’t realize that when you have so much farmland around.”

Advocates like Ruzek are promoting the Cedar as a peaceful place to kayak and fish. In an effort to draw more tourism, plans are underway to make part of the river in downtown Austin into whitewater rapids.

It hasn’t been easy going, however. The Cedar River Watershed District has created only four new access points along the Cedar and nearby tributaries since the Minnesota Legislature made it a state water trail in 2011.

A new access point along the Cedar River State Water Trail, stretching 25 miles from Lansing Township north of Austin to the Iowa border, is on the way after the Mower County Board formally approved it earlier this month following a decade’s worth of work to set it up.

The Orchard Creek Access along Hwy. 105 in Lyle Township is set to be built later this summer, but work initially began around 2015 as local water officials eyed the site but couldn’t secure funding or straighten out property record issues.

That changed after state Department of Natural Resources staff connected the soil and watershed district with engineers, while the Austin-based Hormel Foundation allocated $95,000 toward the project. A DNR grant and up to $50,000 in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds will make up the rest.

The new access point is about halfway between a popular access near the Marcusen Park baseball stadium in Austin and the state line. Iowa lawmakers dedicated another 37 miles of the Cedar River waterway as a state trail in 2023, taking it to Mount Auburn, Iowa.

State officials, environmental advocates and local volunteers have worked to abate the Cedar River’s flooding potential since 2004, when record waters overflowed across much of the city’s center.

Numerous flood control projects over the years resulted in berms, flood stations and other preventive measures to mitigate flooding — during the massive rains across Minnesota last year, Austin largely escaped damage save for a few houses along nearby creeks.

Recreation became a priority as part of Austin’s Vision 2020 community initiative almost 15 years ago, when residents and city leaders alike crafted goals to reach by the start of the decade. In three years from 2011 to 2014, volunteers pulled about 1,100 tires from the river during cleanup events.

Though building up the hype (and the access) for fun on the river has been slow, Ruzek said he’s encouraged by the people who stop by the office looking for trail maps to plan kayaking trips along the river, as well as a new kayak rental company that plans to open later this year.

A rental company was in operation a decade ago, but its operators couldn’t swing the time commitment, Ruzek said. “It was not for lack of interest,” he said.

Future projects to beautify the river are already in the works, including a potential berm project on the north end of the river that could help store sediment.

Austin Mayor Steve King said the efforts were “amazing” given how Mower County is one of only four Minnesota counties with no natural lakes.

“We don’t have … a lot of assets that are environmental assets,” King said. “To clean these places up to make it a recreational waterway is a huge lift.”