Located just south of the city of Minneapolis, it is one of fourteen Regional Priority Urban Wildlife Refuges in the nation.

Many parts of the Refuge are near large establishments of the Twin Cities; the Bloomington Education and Visitor Center and two trailheads are located just blocks from the Mall of America, the Wilkie Unit is just east of Valleyfair and the Louisville Swamp Unit is just south of Minnesota Renaissance Festival.

[citation needed] 11 miles (18 km) of trails lead into the valley from the visitor center and three other access points.

Pedestrians and bicyclists will be able to cross the Cedar Avenue Bridge into Fort Snelling State Park as soon as the spring of 2017.

An interpretive trail circles the man-made Bass Ponds, where the Izaak Walton League raised several fish species to stock lakes statewide from 1926 to the 1950s.

The old concrete piers were raised, poor steel was replaced, and the entire bridge was sand blasted and painted in an original gray color over its five refurbished trusses.

Once one reaches the old road’s terminus at the Minnesota River, you can also take a single track trail west (right) towards the Lyndale Avenue trail-head.

The beat up parking lot, Old Cedar Avenue, bathroom structures, and other area improvements will take place in the spring/summer of 2017.

To date, the FWS has done extensive restoration work to the Bluff Trail which heads west to the Lyndale Ave. trail-head.

They have built a new elevated boardwalk trail system to the edge of Long Meadow Lake about 1/3 of a mile up-lake from the refurbished Cedar Bridge.

[citation needed] This 1,400 acre (5.7 km2) unit surrounds Black Dog Lake, on the right bank of the Minnesota River in Burnsville.

The lake is named after Chief Black Dog, leader of a band of Mdewakanton Sioux who formed a permanent summer village here around 1750 and later sold game to American soldiers and settlers at Fort Snelling.

Clean wastewater from the plant is pumped into Black Dog Lake so it may cool before reentering the Minnesota River.

The Wilkie Unit is located predominantly in the river bottoms, and features three lakes (Blue, Rice, and Fisher) and large areas of associated marsh.

The authorized area for this unit stretches from the Old Highway 169 bridge (now County Road 101) north of Shakopee and eastward along the bluffs in the southern part of Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

This 600 acre (2.4 km2) unit was acquired in 2001 and occupies a bend in the Minnesota River stretching between the towns of Chaska and Carver.

Fish & Wildlife Service staff estimate that Louisville Swamp floods three out of every five years, and trail closures are common.

A water control structure helps regulate the outflow into Sand Creek, a short course which flows into the Minnesota River.

Traffic during the festival (weekends from mid-August through September) significantly impedes access to the Louisville Swamp unit.

The refuge managers, Bloomington and Eagan officials, and public interest groups have all expressed a desire to replace or restore the unsafe bridge.

In the late 1990s, the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport planned a new runway which would route air traffic over parts of the refuge.

A real estate appraisal firm arbitrated a settlement to compensate the refuge for the environmental impact of the noise pollution.

The airport’s commission voted unanimously to accept the settlement in 1998 and ultimately paid $26 million into the Minnesota Valley Trust.