Listing Through Life

We spent most of Independence Day in another country — Canada. We stopped at Grand Portage National Monument, just south of the border, on the way north.

The stockade is built on the site of an old fur-trading post. Traders had to make an 8.5 mile portage here to get around the falls on the Pigeon River. Two buildings have been reconstructed on their original sites. There were originally many others, but the park service has no plans to rebuild more.

The Great Hall had been the dining hall and business headquarters of the North West Company. After we finished looking at the buildings, I took a quick hike up to the top of Mt. Rose, the small hill behind the stockade. My family wandered around down below and tried on period clothing. The view from the top was impressive, with Lake Superior and the stockade spread out in front of me and unbroken Minnesota wilderness behind me. The only sign of the 20th century was the Isle Royale ferry next to the dock.

We drove northeast along the shore of Lake Superior, stopping to see anything that caught our fancy, until we arrived at Grand Marais where we got hotel rooms on the shore. We walked along the breakwater and enjoyed the lake, the weather, and the sunset.

The lighthouse at the end of the breakwater was built in 1922. The light is 38 feet above the lake and can be seen for 16 miles.

This lighthouse is the prime attraction on the North Shore, so of course we had to stop. So did everyone else on the North Shore. The place was crawling, but we still enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

The visitor center had an informative display and a video on how and why the lighthouse was built. It appears that the decision to build it here was mostly political — wealthy steel barons found it cheaper and easier to get the government to build a lighthouse than it would have been to upgrade their ships. It began operating in 1910 and was decommissioned in 1969. The light is 168 feet above Lake Superior.

There were three houses built for the keepers and their families, each with its own barn (the two remaining of which can be seen in the photo below). We were allowed in the first house which has been restored to its 1920’s appearance. We also took the obligatory walk down the long stairway to the shore to take advantage of the classic photo op of the lighthouse on the cliff. The stairway ran alongside the old tramway that was used to bring supplies to the keepers until the road was built in 1934.

We were also able to enter the lighthouse and climb to the landing just below the light. We wandered around and took photos from every possible angle before heading east toward more adventures.