Coldwater Spring, a historic but neglected area near Fort Snelling, will be cleared of its abandoned buildings, restored to natural conditions and managed by the National Park Service, according to a preliminary decision announced Wednesday.

The 27-acre site has spiritual significance for Indian people, and soldiers used the spring as their primary water supply when they built the fort in the early 19th century.

The property is just south of Minnehaha Falls Regional Park, between the Mississippi River and Hwy. 55. It was a U.S. Bureau of Mines research center for decades. The government closed the agency in the mid-1990s, and its buildings have been empty since then.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which has controlled the abandoned property for the past dozen years, will manage contracts to demolish the buildings and restore the area by the fall of 2010, according to Paul Labovitz, Superintendent for the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. Labovitz said that the park service will preserve the area after that and “interpret the rich history of this site.”

Chris Mato Nunpa, retired professor of Indian affairs at Southwest Minnesota State University, said that indigenous people want the land transferred to the Mdewakanton Dakota community, not switched from one federal agency to another. “People want it returned to native ownership, and they don’t want any federal agency owning or controlling that land,” he said.

The spring became controversial in 2001 because construction along Hwy. 55 threatened to disrupt groundwater flow that feeds the spring.

In 2004 the park service began developing a plan for the site; it published a draft environmental study two years later. Little was done since then until the Department of Interior, which owns the land, decided last week to designate the park service as the future manager of the property. That decision will not be final until the environmental study is completed and approved next year.