Picnic shelter in Franz Jevne State Park

Picnic shelter in Franz Jevne State Park

Picnic shelter in Franz Jevne State Park. Photo by Marjorie Savage, 2021. Used with the permission of Marjorie Savage.

US–Canada border marker

US–Canada border marker

Marker at the international border of the United States and Canada inside Franz Jevne State Park. Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Tony Webster, October 5, 2017. CC BY-SA 2.0

Visitors in Franz Jevne State Park

Visitors in Franz Jevne State Park

Visitors enjoy the Rainy River in Franz Jevne State Park. Photograph by Marjorie Savage, 2021. Used with the permission of Marjorie Savage.

Rocky outcrop inside Franz Jevne State Park

Rocky outcrop inside Franz Jevne State Park

A rocky outcrop in Franz Jevne State Park. Photograph by Marjorie Savage, 2021. Used with the permission of Marjorie Savage.

View of the Rainy River inside Franz Jevne State Park

View of the Rainy River inside Franz Jevne State Park

View of the Rainy River in Franz Jevne State Park. Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Tony Webster, October 6, 2017. CC BY-SA 2.0

Franz Jevne State Park

Franz Jevne State Park is Minnesota’s smallest state park, consisting of about 120 acres of hardwood forest and wetlands. Stretching along the southern shoreline of the Rainy River in Koochiching County, the park represents the combination of natural resources and social history that built Minnesota’s far north. It shares a rich culture with the Manitou Burial Mounds, a National Historic Site of Canada, on the river’s northern bank.

Grand Portage Trail sign inside Jay Cooke State Park

Grand Portage sign inside Jay Cooke State Park

Grand Portage sign inside Jay Cooke State Park. This six-mile trail, not to be confused with its better-known namesake, skirts the rapids and waterfalls on the St. Louis River. Voyageurs traveling along this route, which today lies within Jay Cooke State Park, headed into the Mississippi Basin or to Lake Superior. Used by Dakota people for centuries, this Grand Portage (a section of the Northwest Trail) was adopted by the voyageurs in 1798, after the North West Company built a trading post at Sandy Lake. Photo by Jon Lurie, 2020.

Lake Saganaga

Lake Saganaga

Lake Saganaga on the “Voyageur’s Highway.” Voyageurs who paddled the Canadian interior went as far northwest as Great Slave Lake, more than 3000 miles from Montreal. Because of the vast distances involved, these voyageurs would often winter over in the field. Some weathered the long cold season in remote fur posts; others were welcomed to winter with Indigenous families. When the lakes thawed in the spring, these men returned to their canoes, laden with furs, and headed for Lake Superior. Photo by Jon Lurie, 2020.

High Falls on the Pigeon River

High Falls on the Pigeon River

The Pigeon River, which marks a thirty-one-mile portion of the US-Canada border, is the primary route by which voyageurs paddled to the Canadian interior. The lower Pigeon River, which empties into Lake Superior, alternates between navigable waters, cascades, and waterfalls. One of these, High Falls (pictured), is 120 feet tall—the highest in Minnesota. Voyageurs avoided the forbidding lower river by following the Grand Portage trail. Photo by Jon Lurie, 2020.

View of Wita Tanka (Pike Island) and Fort Snelling from Mendota

View of Wita Tanka (Pike Island) and Fort Snelling from Mendota

View of Wita Tanka (Pike Island) and Fort Snelling from Mendota. Painting by Edward Kirkbride Thomas, ca. 1850.

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