It consists of a habitation site with a large quantity of stone tool artifacts, occupied from roughly 800 to 1700 CE.
[3] It was nominated for its scientific potential to illuminate Late Woodland period cultural relationships, lithic technology, and resource use.
[4] The St. Croix River Access Site was discovered during an archaeological field survey for the Minnesota Department of Transportation in 1983.
21 excavation units were dug, which showed that the center of the site had been destroyed by industrial activity in the 1930s but that archaeological deposits to either side remained intact.
The lopsided ratio of lithic artifacts to ceramics suggests that groups utilized the site temporarily for a specific purpose, such as for bone or hide processing.