Posts Tagged With: Pokegama Dam

Grand Rapids, MN March 8, 2022

Our hosts here at the Green Heron admitted they had to stop having breakfast with their guests or they would be gaining weight all the time. I can understand that. Our breakfast of wild rice quiche and homemade cappuccino rolls fuels us up for hiking and allows us to skip a meal later. The wild rice in the omelette was harvested by the hosts and then sent to the Fond du Lac Indian nation near Duluth for processing. Soon they will be making their own maple syrup.

One of my volunteer activities is as a National Park Service (the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area) docent at St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam visitor center on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. I have known that the Army Corps of Engineers constructed a series of six dams on the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota to regulate water flow for navigation between St. Paul MN and Prairie du Chen WI. The dams were built between 1884 and 1913. However, Chris and I had never observed one of these dams.

We eliminated that oversight today, visiting Pokegama Dam just upstream from Grand Rapids. The dam is not as dramatic as the dams located at most of the locks south of Minneapolis. The Corps has stated that the dams’ original purpose for water flow regulation has been less important since the Corps increased the depth of the navigation channel between St. Paul and St. Louis from 6 feet to 9 feet in the 1930s. Recreation, flood mitigation, and environmental purposes are now more important.

The dam stop was a nice adjunct to our visit in February to the headwaters of the Mississippi River. At the headwaters, the river flows out from under the ice covered lake and runs free until eventually the river has its wintry ice cover. At Pokegama Dam, the upstream river surface is frozen and then the water runs free for a short spell on the downstream side of the dam.

Our second stop was at Schoolcraft State Park. Henry Schoolcraft and his Native America guide Ozawindib are credited with making known the true source of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca. This small state park along the Mississippi is named after him. We took a morning hike here; the two mile trail was quite clear but uneven due to the previous hikers path over the snow. Our first trip here in 2017 had been in August. No bugs this time of the year. While we did not see deer, evidence of their presence was obvious by depressions made by resting deer, tracks leading across the river, and deer scat abundant on the trail.

Our final stop of the day was at the Itasca County Historical Society. The museum had nice displays of the area with special exhibits covering topics such as local high schools, mining, logging, the river, and veterans from the area. The director checked their records and sent me a digital photo of the Pokegama Falls from the late 1800s. Then it was back to the B and B for a late afternoon snack and discussion with our hosts.

Chris and Ed, Grand Rapids MN March 9