This is a history of 300 years of trade and tradition on Lake Superior's North Shore, with special interest in Grand Portage where the Grand Portage National Monument was established.

The purpose of this report is to describe the fur trade that took place at Grand Portage between Europeans and Native Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. During this period Grand Portage was important for many reasons. A strategic geographical point in the trade route between the Great Lakes and the Canadian Northwest, it was best known as a trade depot and company headquarters in the period between 1765 and 1804.

"The journals of two clerks of the American Fur Company recall a lost moment in the history of the fur trade and the Anishinaabeg along Lake Superior?s North Shore. Through the words of long-ago witnesses, Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais recovers the overlooked Anishinaabeg roots and corporate origins of Grand Marais, a history more complex than is often told. It recalls a time in northern Minnesota when men of the American Fur Company and the Anishinaabeg navigated the shifting course of progress, negotiating the new perils and prospects of commerce?s westward drift. Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais reveals how the lives of local fur traders and the area?s indigenous people were shaped and influenced by Lake Superior and its watershed. Fascinating personal, local, cultural, and economic details provide insight into how both cultures were buffeted by and in the grip of political and economic forces not much different from those familiar to us today. -- Chel Anderson, coauthor of North Shore: A Natural History of Minnesota?s Superior Coast"-- https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/gichi-bitobig-grand-marais.

Minnesota's lakes may be its most famous features, but the glaciated countryside disguises a much longer history of volcanoes and plate collisions--not surprising when you learn that Minnesota was at the active edge of the fledgling North American continent for several billion years.

Encompassing the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Superior National Forest, Voyageurs National Park, and Grand Portage National Monument in Minnesota and Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, the Quetico-Superior is the only region of its kind in the U.S. and Canada. This book tells the story of the long campaign to secure and preserve it for posterity and also illustrates the development of an American idea -- wilderness preservation.

A red squirrel stows away on a canoe to fulfill his dream of joining a group of voyageurs--men who paddle canoes filled with goods to a trading post thousands of miles away. A Finalist for the Minnesota Book Award It is 1792 and unbeknownst to a group of voyageurs traveling from Montreal to Grand Portage, an intrepid squirrel, Jean Pierre Petit Le Rouge, sneaks onto their canoe. Le Rouge is soon discovered because he can't contain his excitement--mon dieu he is so enthusiastic. The smells! The vistas! The comradery! The voyageurs are not particularly happy to have him, especially because Le Rouge rides, but he does not paddle. He eats, but he does not cook. He doesn't even carry anything on portages--sometimes it is he who has to be carried. He also has a terrible singing voice. What kind of voyageur is that? When they finally arrive at the trading post Le Rouge is in for a terrible shock--the voyageurs have traveled all those miles to collect beaver pelts. With the help of Monique, a smart and sweet flying squirrel, Le Rouge organizes his fur-bearing friends of the forest to ambush the men and try and convince them to quit being voyageurs. Written by a Newbery honor author, the book has over 20 black-and-white illustrations.