6.2 at 1 Camp Cozy Park_NRMP_2023

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11 Friends of the Mississippi River Camp Cozy Park NRMP INTRODUCTION This Natural Resource Management Plan presents the site analysis and recommended management and land use activities for the 48-acre Camp Cozy Park in Elk River, Minnesota. This document can be revised only by written agreement by the City of Elk River, MN and Friends of the Mississippi River. Camp Cozy Park is owned by the City of Elk River, Minnesota. Camp Cozy’s name is a nod to its history as a riverside resort in the 1920s and 1930s, which featured camping and hand-dug channels that allowed paddlers to canoe a circuit through the resort and along the Elk River. The park is located on the western edge of the city and sits on the north bank of the Elk River approximately 5 miles of the Elk’s confluence with the Mississippi River. The Elk River is freely flowing in this stretch with many small islands and channels connecting the river to its floodplain. In addition to a wide floodplain and terrace forest, Camp Cozy Park features oak forest and two remnant dry prairies. The property is approximately 2,400 feet long and 1,500 feet wide at its maxima. The core of the city of Elk River lies to the east of the property, and US-10 runs to the south of the property across the river. Vintage private residences flank the property’s boundaries on the west, north, and east edges. The property can be divided into four primary areas: the upland dry prairies, the upland oak forest, the terrace forest and the floodplain. The site’s topography is relatively flat and grades from the river channel at 874 feet above sea level (FASL) to 886 FASL at the center of the northern prairie. Four specific soil types are present within the park with three of those types attributed to the Elkriver soil series. This series consists of very deep, somewhat poorly and moderately well drained soils that formed in postglacial alluvium consisting of a coarse-loamy mantle and underlying sandy sediments on flood plains. These soils have moderate and moderately rapid permeability in the upper part and rapid permeability in the underlying material. The northwestern forest, northern prairie, southern forest and southern remnant prairie have these fine, sandy loams that are rarely flooded. The eastern and central forest areas that extend to the park’s southern floodplain have fine sandy loams that are occasionally flooded. The floodplain terrace has a more unique soil complex made up of both very poorly drained and poorly drained soils with sandy particle sizes. Camp Cozy Park is located at the southern edge of the Anoka Sandplain ecological subsection, just north of its boundary with the Big Woods subsection, as designated by the Minnesota DNR (Figure 16). This subsection lies within the Minnesota and Northeast Iowa Morainal section in the Eastern Broadleaf Forest province of the state. The property is also situated directly within the Metro Conservation Corridors system (Figure 3), an important habitat network defined by the DNR for both sedentary and migratory plant and animal life in and around the Twin Cities. The property is also surrounded by a variety of land units identified by the Minnesota County Biological Survey (MCBS) as areas of biological significance (Figure 3).