Mazeppa, MN

Mazeppa is a Wabasha County city on the North Fork of the Zumbro River, with a name borrowed from Lord Byron’s poem about the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa. The town was platted in 1855, and the river still supplies its most distinctive piece of built history: the 1904 Walnut Street Bridge, a steel Pratt truss now used by pedestrians. Minnesota State Highway 60 brings the road traffic through town, but the old bridge sends you back to the river gorge and the town’s first layout. Mazeppa is a small Minnesota place where a literary name and a steel bridge do most of the introducing.