Mee-zee-see-bee

The Mississippi River has its own National Park in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area that we visited today. Created in 1988, it is 75 miles long and represents the many  natural, cultural, and economic themes of the entire Mississippi River, the waterway known to the Ojibway Indians as the Mee-zee-see-bee, the Father of Waters. 

Minneapolis traces its roots to early European settlements at St. Anthony Falls, the only major falls on the Mississippi. The falls powered the gristmills and sawmills that provided flour and lumber of the settlers. Historically, St. Paul was the northernmost navigable point on the 2,350-mile river. 

Ancestors of Today's American Indians began moving into the upper Mississippi Valley about 12,000 years ago after the last of the continental glaciers receded. They established intermittent and seasonal villages on terraces above the riverbanks and canoed the waterways to hunt, gather plants, and trade goods. 

Spanish and French expeditions explored portions of the Mississippi River in the 1600s and 1700s. Some explorers, entering from the north, were looking for the river's mouth. Others, entering from the south, were searching for its origin -- and hoping to discover that the river provided a shortcut across the continent to the Far East.

Recognizing the natural riches of the region, the French (late 1600s-1763) and English (1763-early 1800s) established trading posts along the upper Mississippi River. Great quantities of beaver pelts and other furs were traded at the posts for cloth, metal tools, and other products. Early settlers sent home reports of the bountiful wilderness and of opportunities to create new lives for themselves and their children. 

In the mid-1800s immigrants from Germany, Norway, Sweden and other European nations and Americans from the East, moved into the area. This forced the Dakota Indians to leave the Twin Cities area in 1854 for reservations along the Minnesota River. The settlers cleared forests, built homes, and constructed roads linking farms with the villages and river ports. In 1858 St. Paul counted more than 1,000 steamboat dockings. Powered by the river, Minneapolis became the flour milling capital of the nation from 1880 to 1930. 

The Visitor Center is located on the first floor of the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Paula provided us with information, maps and encouragement.

After our visit to the National Park we decided to take in the Science Museum.

They have a huge display of dinosaurs and this T-Rex in the lobby was just an introduction.

There was also a nice exhibit on the Mississippi River and a replica of the marker that is at the headwaters on Lake Itasca. You remember this from two days ago.

This is the fossil of a giant beaver that was in the area 11,700 years ago.

An artist's rendering of what one of these giant beavers looked like. Notice that they lacked the broad, flat tail of the current beaver. Giant beavers grew to be six to nine feet long and weighed from 300 to 500 pounds, about as much as today's black bears. 

The mummy is a man in his 30s. The body displays three characteristics of ancient priests: a shaven head, callused feet (meaning he walked barefoot), and well preserved hands that show no sign of hard manual labor. There is no indication of the cause of death. The age of the mummy is from 1517 - 1320 BC.

This dinosaur fossil was suspended from the ceiling in the stairway outside the main exhibit.

Triceratops, a Cretaceous Period, plant-eating dinosaur, is the most famous of the horned dinosaurs. This is the most complete Triceratops skeleton known. Only three other museums in the world display real Triceratops skeletons; the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution and in the Milwaukee Public Museum. This skeleton is a composite of two Triceratops found in Montana's Hell Creek Formation.

This Triceratops is the largest known, more than one and a half times larger than the complete skeletons in the other three museums. Since dinosaurs may have grown throughout their lives, it's hard to know the maximum adult size of any particular species.

These spinal plates are the most puzzling feature of this Stegosaurs. They were probably of little use for defense. More likely, these plates both absorbed and shed heat, helping Stegosaurus maintain a steady body temperature. Elephants use their large ears in much the same way today.

Diplodocus is very typical of the largest dinosaurs. The long neck and tail (which you can't see in the picture, but it was very long) counterbalanced each other, and the animal used its neck like an elephant's trunk, sweeping it back and forth to strip vegetation. It is estimated that Diplodocus may have been well over 100 feet long and weighed nearly 80 tons.

Glyptodont is an extinct relative of the armadillo. 

Because of their weighty armor, glyptodonts may have been too slow and ponderous to compete during the rapid ecosystem changes of the last three million years.

Another exhibit featured a tornado. We could put our hand through the tornado and disrupt it swirling.

View of the Mississippi outside the 5th floor of the Science Museum. 

Frederick tried the tugboat simulator and beached the container barge that he was piloting down the Mississippi.

Little Falls

I think we left Lake Itasca State Park at just the right time. Yesterday the temperature was in the mid 60s and this morning it was 26 degrees and the weather forecast is for snow tomorrow. In a campground with almost 300 sites, there was only one other camper last night. The stars were beautiful in a clear sky with a background of fir trees.

It was an odd sensation to have an entire campground to ourselves.

The road, highway #10, down to the Twin Cities paralleled a railroad track. At one point there was this train with new tank cars which looked like a segmented worm or millipede. 

Minnesota farms are big and flat. The closer we got to Minneapolis the warmer it got. By the time we arrived at our campground it was 74 degrees.

Our big adventure for the day was a stop in Little Falls, Minnesota, the birthplace of Charles Lindberg and where I spent four years in high school. Little Falls is just about half way between Lake Itasca and Minneapolis and we arrived around11:30 am.

This is at the Charles Lindberg State Park in Little Falls. The park buildings were constructed by the WPA, not the CCC.  This structure is a water tower that, until 1964, supplied all the water to the park. 

This is Charles Lindberg's childhood home.  I hope you can just make out the Mississippi River through the trees to the right of the house.

The train station in Little Falls where I used to arrive to go to school after the holidays. It is now the Chamber of Commerce building.

The movie theater in Little Falls notable for where I first saw the movie Ben Hur.

Adjacent to the high school is a parking lot. When I was here for high school this was an open field and the fire department used to flood it in the winter for ice skating. The third floor, on the top, is where all the rooms and dorms were.

The building on the right is the Chapel and there is now a new main entrance where these two

buildings connect.

St. Francis greeting all who come to visit.

This is our Chapel, the nuns side. The students used a smaller are on the right which is now a "gathering" area.

This is the old library room on the second floor where I first worked in a library. It is now a conference room. The other classrooms on the second floor are now used for a Continuing Education program.

Up on the third floor is the old bathroom that looks remarkably the same as when I used it.

The second floor still has the piano practice rooms and one with an organ. I took piano lessons three years and organ for one.

The swimming pool in the basement is still very much in use, only now, on the right, is a hot tub. 

The main entrance to the High School with beautiful maple tree that still has its leaves.

When trees were trees

First, a bit about the geology of Minnesota provided by the Geological Society of Minnesota. The diversified scenery of Minnesota - of which the Itasca Park area is one phase - is due to the location of the state in the approximate center of the continent. Situated midway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, the state has within its boundaries three principal divides in the watersheds of North America. Minnesota lacks the rugged topography and high elevations found in most continental divides. Its highest elevation, 2,300 feet on the Mesabi Range, is in close proximity to its lowest, the surface of Lake Superior, 602 feet above the sea.

The central surface of the state slopes from the north-central portion near Itasca Park in four directions toward its distant and opposite corners. The 10,000 lakes of Minnesota cover 5,600 square miles, an average of 1 square mile of water for every 15 of land. This unprecedented supply of water, which has a surface exceeding the water area if any other state, finds its way to the ocean through Hudson Bay, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.

We began our exploration of Lake Itasca and the headwaters of the Mississippi at the Visiter Center. 

They had this nice relief map of the park. Lake Itasca is the largest blue area with three arms.  The headwaters of the Mississippi is at the far right edge of the map. There are also over 100 other, smaller, lakes in the park.

Here is our friend the beaver (le castor). At one point, at the height of the logging, at the turn of the last century, the beaver was almost extinct in the park. Several pairs were introduced in the park to restore their presence.

This area holds one of the most studied archaeological sites for this time period in Minnesota. In 1937, bones, tools and weapons were found where giant bison (one third larger than today) and other animals were killed and prepared. From this discovery many details were learned about the life and environment of people who hunted here 8,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence suggests that in the fall, hunters came here knowing the bison would be crossing. Some bison became trapped in the soft and boggy stream bed and were killed with stone-tipped spears.  2,250 to 350 years ago, ancestors of the Dakota People, known as the Woodland Indians, established extensive villages around Lake Itasca. 

Neat replica of an Ojibwe dwelling.

The CCC was very active in this park in the thirties. You could enroll in the CCC if you were male, 18-24 years of age, not married or employed and your family was on "relief". Each "boy" who enrolled in the CCC was paid $30 a month, of which $25 was sent to his family. The remaining $5 could be used by the enrollee at the camp canteen, for personal expenses of his choice, or perhaps just for fun. For their part of the deal, the "boys" were expected to work a 40 hour week and adhere to camp rules. They built trails, park buildings and planted trees.

After spending over an hour in the Visitor Center we embarked on the Dr. Roberts Trail. This week-end, Saturday and Sunday, was Youth Hunt Weekend; teens were allowed into the park, accompanied by a parent or mentor, to hunt deer two weeks before the start of the fall hunting season. Hunting is allowed in the park and there is a limit of 4 deer per hunter. The sole purpose of this hunt is to control the deer population.

Since the hike we chose was in the hunt zone, we decided to accept the offer of safety vest. About a half mile in we came upon this blind. Notice also the ladder and perch on the tree to the right.

At about the half way point we came to Lyendecker Lake where we counted over 30 Trumperter swans.

We chose to eat our lunch by Lydecker Lake watching the swans.

Along the trail Frederick found this shell. 

In a wet area we also found evidence of beaver.

Almost back to the trailhead we came upon this Old Timer's Cabin built by the CCC. A plaque reads, "Almost humorous in its scale, it is far from that as a reminder of magnificent forests all but extinct. As a relic of the days when trees were trees, this cabin can inspire us to firm resolution to permit them to be so again.... Somewhere between the scale of this log work and the spindling scale of the majority of present day log structures is the happy and satisfying medium that is too infrequently seen."

In front of the cabin was this charming little chair carved from a log. 

In the summer this boat is used for tours on Lake Itasca.

This area in the park is called the Preachers Grove and contains these magnificent red pine trees.

A lovely overview of Lake Itasca.

At the headwater of the Mississippi is this sculpture. In Anishinabe (Ojibwe) belief it is the women who are the Caretakers of the Water. In this sculpture, a woman is leaning over, releasing a clutch of small turtles from a basket, renewing the seasons and continuing the waters of life. Her flowing hair is like that of flowing water. The turtles, strong water symbols, also symbolize the universal cycles of life in Anishinabe belief. The turtle's round shell represents the earth, moon, sun and seasonal cycles. The legs of the turtle point in the four directions, his head points up to honor Grandfather Sun and his tail points down towards Mother Earth. Turtles show us all directions of life - they live in the water, walk on land and breath air. Turtles are a strong symbol of the importance of this site, located here at the beginning of the Headwaters.

It's official.

Here I am, standing in the middle of the Mississippi River.

Frederick walking across the Mississippi.

In the middle...

and successfully reaching the other side.

Here I am doing the same.

Success!

A little further along the Mississippi is this spot where two stairs reach down almost to the water. I have not a clue as to the significance or use of these stairs.