About Scenic Superior National Forest
This group is a place to show off your photos of scenery, flora or fauna in the beautiful Superior National Forest in Northeastern Minnesota.
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Scenic Superior National Forest
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You are invited to join our new group!
Scenic Superior National Forest
Please feel free to add this photo and any others in your photostream
that would be appropriate for the group!
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... this anomalous land, this sprawling waste of timber and rock and water... this empty tract of primordial silences and winds and erosions and shifting colours.
Hugh MacLennan/Barometer Rising
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General Information
Superior - a more appropriate name could not have been given to this extraordinary National Forest. Located in the northeastern corner of Minnesota, sandwiched between Lake Superior and the Canadian border, this vast woodland harbors bald eagles and ospreys, moose and white tailed deer, timber wolves and black bear, beaver and red fox. This is the largest federal forest in the contiguous 48 states.
The Superior National Forest contains over 2,000 lakes. Even so, only 12% of the Forest's 3.9 million acres is covered by water. The rest is blanketed by dense, mossy floored forests of pine, spruce, aspen, birch, cedar and tamarack, or saturated by vast bogs and impenetrable swamps. The National Forest hosts 27 United States Forest Service campgrounds, 9 Minnesota DNR campgrounds, 2,200 developed campsites within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), and 254 "dispersed" campsites outside the BWCAW. These camping areas provide quick access to 354 fishing lakes, 162 public boat landings, 29 picnic areas, 400 miles of designated hiking trails, 450 miles of groomed cross-country ski trails, and over 1500 miles of canoe routes through the BWCAW. The area that is now the BWCAW was established as the Superior Roadless Area in 1938. It became the BWCA in 1964, and at some point in the 1980's became the BWCAW. Outside of the BWCAW, the Forest has over 2,700 miles of roads.
Geology
Northeastern Minnesota lies on the southern edge of a massive bedrock formation called the Canadian Shield. The Precambrian rocks that constitute this continental foundation are some of the oldest exposed rocks in the world. The Ely Greenstone belt is known to be about 2.6 billion years old. It is a belt of metamorphosed pillow basalt, a dark fine-grained lava which cooled underwater, and long after solidification, was subjected to heat and pressure. The belt is almost 40 miles long, 2 to 6 miles wide, and it's exposed thickness is 20,000 feet. It runs from Lake Vermilion, eastward to near Snowbank Lake.
At one time, a vast inland sea covered the area, resulting in sediments in the southwestern part of the Forest that became the world's most productive iron range. The geologic struggle to reclaim the continent continued when a period of mountain building occurred about 1.6 billion years ago, followed by a period of extensive volcanic activity along what is now the North Shore of Lake Superior. That ancient mountain range, the only one in the state, now accounts for both the highest point (Eagle Mountain - 2301 ft.) and the lowest point (Lake Superior - 602 ft.) in Minnesota.
The products of glacial quarrying and abrasion are clearly displayed in the Forest in the form of boulders, streamlined hills, polished and striated bedrock outcroppings, and hundreds of lake basins. Glacial deposits, too, in the form of moraines, drumlins, and eskers, are important features of the landscape. These features, as we know them, are relatively young, in geologic terms. None is older than about 25,000 years, and some are as young as 12,000 years. It is this fairly recent glacial past that adds special character to the entire northeastern part of Minnesota.
The Forest's "plumbing" system is quite unique. It is drained by 3 different drainage systems. Lake Superior, and subsequently the Atlantic Ocean, is the "sump" for North Shore streams - mainly short watercourses with small drainage areas. The Rainy River carries water from the border lakes area, through Lake of the Woods, and finally to Hudson Bay. Nibbling along the edges of the region, are tributaries to the Upper Mississippi, and the St. Croix, which drain southward to the Gulf of Mexico. The Laurentian Divide marks the boundary between these drainage systems. A rest stop along Highway 169 near Virginia marks the Laurentian Divide. The question I have... if you were to flush a toilet at this rest stop, where would it go?
The information about the Superior National was obtained, quoted, and paraphrased from the following books:
Superior National Forest
Robert Beymer
The Mountaineers/Seattle 1989
Minnesota's Geology
Richard W. Ojakangas and Charles Matsch
University of Minnesota Press 1982/2001
Minnesota Underfoot
Constance Jefferson Sansome
Voyageur Press 1983/1987
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