Cannon River is located south of the metropolitan area. It begins at the Shields Lake outlet and runs through hills, forest and farmland before entering a broad gorge at the city of Cannon Falls. The Cannon River then flows east before entering the Mississippi River upstream of the city of Red Wing. The river is a state water trail, and the section from Faribault to the Mississippi River has been designated a Wild and Scenic River by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The Cannon Valley Trail runs for 20 miles along the river between the cities of Cannon Falls and Red Wing, attracting 100,000 cyclists per year.Cannon River at Welch, River Mile 11.9 is a WOMP (Watershed Outlet Monitoring Program) station. Samples are collected at regular intervals for baseflow and also during storm events. This station additionally has automatic monitoring equipment which takes measurements every 15 minutes. This continuous data can be found under the "Time Series" dropdown in the "Data Collected" section located farther down on this webpage.Cannon River near Harliss MN, River Mile 4 was monitored as part of the Large Rivers Conventional Monitoring Program until 2007.