Lakeshore RV Park - Ortonville

Lakeshore RV Park in Ortonville, Minnesota, is a lakeside campground two miles from the historic downtown on Big Stone Lake — a peaceful resort property in Big Stone County at the Minnesota-South Dakota state line, on the western edge of the Minnesota prairie where the prairie pothole lakes, the Minnesota River's headwaters, and the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge's wetland ecosystem give guests the specific outdoor recreation and wildlife observation access of the transition zone between the eastern deciduous forest and the northern Great Plains grassland. Ortonville's Big Stone County position on US-12 at the Minnesota-South Dakota border gives the campground the practical access to both the Minnesota and South Dakota sections of the Coteau des Prairies (the Prairie Plateau) landscape that extends west to the Missouri River. Lakeshore RV sites with a variety of hookup options, two miles from the Ortonville downtown's shops and restaurants on Big Stone Lake, give guests the practical lakeside base for the Big Stone County fishing, boating, and wildlife observation that the lake and the surrounding Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge specifically enable. The Ortonville downtown's proximity to the campground gives the resort the specific small-town Minnesota combination of lake setting and walkable commercial main street character that the Big Stone County seat sustains as the commercial center for the Minnesota-South Dakota border agricultural community. Pets are welcome. Big Stone Lake, the source of the Minnesota River on the Minnesota-South Dakota border, extends 26 miles along the state line in a glacially carved lake basin that gives the Big Stone City and Ortonville communities their specific lakeshore setting in the transition between the Minnesota River valley's agricultural bottomland and the Coteau des Prairies' rolling prairie upland. The lake's walleye, northern pike, bass, and perch fishery sustains the Big Stone County recreational fishing economy, and the lake's shallow wind-driven bays give waterfowl hunters the Big Stone Lake marsh hunting that the waterfowl migration routes through the Minnesota River valley specifically channel through the Ortonville area each October and November. Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge, three miles west of Ortonville on the Minnesota River, protects 11,521 acres of prairie, wetland, and Minnesota River bottomland that serve as critical nesting habitat for the Yellow Rail — one of the most secretive and most rarely observed shorebirds in North America, whose nesting population in the Big Stone NWR grassland marshes represents one of the most significant concentrations of the species in the continental United States. The refuge's auto tour route gives wildlife observers the grassland and wetland bird diversity of the upper Minnesota River in the specific landscape of the Missouri Coteau's easternmost reach that the Big Stone County position at the prairie's eastern edge preserves. Lakeshore RV Park serves guests through Minnesota's camping season from May through October, with the summer fishing season from June through August and the fall waterfowl hunting season from September through November representing the two primary outdoor recreation visitor cycles that the Big Stone Lake and the Minnesota River valley sustain in the Ortonville area's specific combination of lake and prairie landscape. Lac qui Parle State Park and Wildlife Management Area, 30 miles southeast of Ortonville in Chippewa and Lac qui Parle Counties, encompasses the 5,000-acre Lac qui Parle Lake on the Minnesota River and the adjacent wildlife management area that sustains the Canada Goose nesting population and the Canada Goose migration through the Minnesota River valley in the most significant waterfowl management unit in the upper Minnesota River watershed. Reserve sites ahead for the summer fishing season and fall waterfowl hunting dates.