Height of Land Portage

The portage, {{convert|80|rod|mi m}} long, crosses a low saddle between North Lake and South Lake.{{cite map |map = Topographic Map |title = The National Map |publisher = United States Geological Survey |via = Microsoft Research Maps |date = January 7, 1986 |map-url = http://msrmaps.com/image.aspx?T=2&S=12&Z=15&X=851&Y=6662&W=1 |access-date = May 6, 2014 }}See [https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=48.099865,-90.565453&sll=37.062500,-95.677068&spn=0.027445,0.055528&sspn=35.082817,59.853516&t=h&hl=en satellite image of Height of Land Portage] at Google Maps. It adjoins the boundary vista, a cleared strip which marks the Canada–United States border between those lakes.{{Cite web |first = Proescholdt |last = Kevin |title = Wilderness Between the Cracks: Where Motor Use and other Wilderness Violations have Degraded the Eastern Part of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness |date = March 2007 |pages = 4, 5 |publisher = Friends of the Boundary Waters |url = http://www.friends-bwca.org/pdfs/Wilderness%20Between%20the%20Cracks.pdf |access-date = May 6, 2014 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070928014930/http://www.friends-bwca.org/pdfs/Wilderness%20Between%20the%20Cracks.pdf |archive-date = September 28, 2007 }}. Photographs of boundary vista and illegal snowmobile use of adjacent portage trail, from report prepared for Izaak Walton League of America, Sierra Club North Star Chapter, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, and Wilderness Watch. South Lake is the source of the Arrow River, tributary to the Pigeon River, which flows east to Lake Superior, other Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. North Lake is in the watershed of the Rainy River, which drains by way of the Winnipeg and Nelson Rivers to Hudson Bay.{{cite book |last = Morse |first = Eric |title = Fur Trade Routes of Canada |publisher = NorthWord Press |year = 1979 |location = Minoqua, Wisconsin |pages = 71–75 |url = |doi = |isbn = 1-55971-045-4 }}

According to the Canada/US International Boundary Commission, Ontario's boundary with the United States runs 2700 kilometers on water and only about one kilometer on land.{{cite web |last = Canada/United States International Boundary Commission |authorlink = |title = St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes |work = Presentation at 2006 IBRU Conference |page = 21 |publisher = Durham University |year = 2006 |url = http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/ibru/conferences/thailand/canada.pdf |doi = |access-date = May 6, 2014 }} The 80-rod Height of Land Portage is a significant part of the land border; the remainder is along two other portages, Watap Portage ({{convert|100|rod|mi m|disp=or}}) a short distance to its east, and Swamp (or Monument) Portage ({{convert|72|–|80|rod|mi m|disp=or}}) to the west in the BWCA and Quetico Provincial Park.{{cite book |last = Lass |first = William E. |authorlink = |title = Minnesota's Boundary with Canada |publisher = Minnesota Historical Society |year = 1980 |location = St. Paul, Minnesota |page = 111 |url = |doi = |isbn = 0-87351-153-0 }}{{cite web |last = Rook |first = Earl S.J. |title = BWCA Glossary 'S' |work = A Boundary Waters Compendium |publisher = www.rook.org |year = 2004 |url = http://www.rook.org/earl/bwca/lists/glossary/s.html |access-date = May 6, 2014 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130630112835/http://www.rook.org/earl/bwca/lists/glossary/s.html |archive-date = June 30, 2013 }}{{cite web |last = Rook |first = Earl S. J. |title = BWCA Glossary 'W' |work = A Boundary Waters Compendium |publisher = www.rook.org |year = 2004 |url = http://www.rook.org/earl/bwca/lists/glossary/w.html |access-date = May 6, 2014 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160303230758/http://www.rook.org/earl/bwca/lists/glossary/w.html |archive-date = March 3, 2016 }}

The Height of Land Portage may have had its origin as a route for foraging or migrating animals. Historians believe that many portages started as animal tracks, and were later used by the early inhabitants of the area. In the Pre-Contact Era (before peoples of the First Nations first encountered European explorers), those natives had long used birchbark canoes as the principal means of travel in the thick boreal forest of the Quetico-Superior area. The Height of Land Portage likely was used by those peoples.{{cite web |last=Vogel |first=Robert C. |first2 = David G. |last2 = Stanley |title = Portage Trails in Minnesota, 1630s–1870s |type=Multiple Property Documentation Form |publisher=National Park Service |year=1992 |url={{NRHP url|id=64500288}} |format=PDF |access-date=May 6, 2014 }}

The search for the Northwest Passage, the fur trade, and missionary activity brought European travelers to the area. La Vérendrye used native routes in 1732 to reach Rainy Lake. In the latter part of the eighteenth century it was used by {{lang|fr|voyageurs}} of the French-Canadian fur brigades as their main route from Grand Portage on Lake Superior to the {{lang|fr|pays d'en haut}}, the "upper country" beyond the height of land separating the Great Lakes from the fur country in the Northwest; see Canadian canoe routes. At one time there was a refitting station on the west end of the portage where canoes were repaired.{{cite book |last = Delafield |first = Joseph |year = 1943 |url = https://archive.org/details/unfortifiedbound00dela |title = The Unfortified Boundary: A Diary of the First Survey of the Canadian Boundary Line from St. Regis to the Lake of the Woods |page = 408 }}

Voyageurs coming for the first time to the {{lang|fr|pays d'en haut}} were initiated after crossing the portage. Each newcomer would be sprinkled with a cedar bough dipped in water, and be made to swear that he would not allow another novice to pass that way without undergoing similar rites and that he would never kiss another voyageur's wife without her consent. Concluding the ceremony with a gunfire salute and drinks of "high wine" (a type of rum), the new {{lang|fr|Homme du nord}} or Nor'wester and his company would resume their journey.{{cite magazine |last = Podruchny |first = Carolyn |title = Baptizing Novices: Ritual Moments among French Canadian Voyageurs in the Montreal Fur Trade, 1780–1821 |magazine = Canadian Historical Review |volume = 83 |issue = 2 |pages = 165–95 |publisher = University of Toronto Press, Journals Division |date = June 2002 |url = http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/d76210w17116g065/fulltext.pdf |doi = 10.3138/CHR.83.2.165 |access-date = May 6, 2014 }}{{Dead link|date=January 2020 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}{{cite book |last = Nute |first = Grace Lee |title = The Voyageur |publisher = Minnesota Historical Society |year = 1955 |location = St. Paul, Minnesota |pages = 66–67 |isbn = 0-87351-012-7 }}

Following the American Revolution the Treaty of Paris set the international boundary between British North America and the United States along the line of water communication between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods. During the era of exploration there were three principal routes used by canoe brigades to connect these two lakes, all of which crossed the divide separating western Lake Superior from the Hudson Bay watershed:

• the Grand Portage route to Rainy Lake, which used the portage described in this article;
• to the east, the Kam–Dog–Maligne route used by early French explorer Jacques de Noyon in 1688, which headed north from the lake at the site of Fort William, Ontario, up the Kaministiquia and Dog Rivers to Cold Water Lake, crossed the divide by Prairie Portage to Height of Land Lake, then went west by way of the Savanne, Pickerel, and Maligne Rivers to Lake La Croix where it joined the Grand Portage route; and
• to the west, the St. Louis–Vermilion route, which went from Lake Superior at Fond du Lac (the "end of the lake") near modern Duluth, Minnesota, up the St. Louis and Embarrass Rivers, across the height of land (by a portage which also bears the name Height of Land Portage) to Pike River and Lake Vermilion, then down the Vermilion River to the Grand Portage route.

Britain asserted that the westernmost St. Louis-Vermilion route was the usual line of water communications, while the United States advocated the easternmost Kam–Dog–Maligne Route. Following surveys in the early nineteenth century, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 fixed the route along the Pigeon River and the Height of Land Portage between North and South Lakes.{{cite web |last = |first = |authorlink = |title = Webster-Ashburton Treaty, Art. 2 |work = |publisher = Yale Law School |year = 1842 |url = http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/br-1842.asp |doi = |access-date = May 6, 2014 }}

Since then, the portage has been recognized as part of the border. "Free and open to the use of the citizens and subjects of both countries", it continues in its historic use as a footpath for the overland transport of canoes across the divide separating the Great Lakes Basin from the Canadian northwest.

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{{National Register of Historic Places}}

Category:Canada–United States border

Category:Geography of Cook County, Minnesota

Category:Geography of Thunder Bay District

Category:Historic trails and roads in Minnesota

Category:Transportation on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota

Category:Portages in Canada

Category:Superior National Forest

Category:Trade routes

Category:Transportation in Cook County, Minnesota

Category:National Register of Historic Places in Cook County, Minnesota

Category:Portages on the National Register of Historic Places