Things to do nearVoyageurs National Park

Voyageurs National Park takes its name from the French-Canadian fur traders who paddled these same routes in birchbark canoes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, moving beaver pelts south toward Montreal along a network of lakes and portages that formed the backbone of the North American fur trade. The park sits along the border between Minnesota and Ontario, and its terrain is among the oldest exposed rock on earth, with outcroppings of Canadian Shield granite dating back nearly three billion years. Today the park encompasses roughly 218,000 acres, more than a third of which is water, making it one of the few national parks in the country where a personal watercraft or rental boat is the primary means of exploration.

Visitors come to fish for walleye, northern pike, and smallmouth bass on Rainy Lake and Kabetogama Lake, and to kayak quieter channels where bald eagles nest in tall white pines above the shoreline. Moose, black bears, and wolves all live within the park boundaries, and patient observers along forested inlets have a genuine chance of wildlife sightings.

The Ellsworth Rock Gardens, accessible only by boat, offer an unexpected discovery: a terraced lakeside garden built by a Chicago contractor over several decades in the mid-twentieth century, now maintained by the National Park Service. Ranger-led boat tours depart from multiple visitor centers and cover geology, natural history, and the voyageur heritage that gives the park its identity. Voyageurs National Park rewards those willing to slow down and move at the pace of the water.