Voyageurs National Park - Rainy Lake Unit

The Rainy Lake Visitor Center is the only visitor center open year-round. It is located at the end of a peninsula and is only about six miles from our campground. 

Voyageurs National Park Main Visitor Center

The Park Service estimates there are about 40-50 moose in Voyageurs National Park.

LIFE ON THE LAKE NATIONAL PARK BOAT TOUR

We made reservations for the Life on the Lake Boat Tour with stops at historic locations on Rainy Lake. The ranger guide led us to gold mines and a fish camp and explained the diverse history of the area.

This National Park Boat holds 49 passengers. We had 25 on our ranger led boat tour.

Our first stop on this two-and-a-half-hour trip was Little American Island. 

We took a short walk to two abandoned shaft type gold mines, 1894 to 1901. Most of the gold mines during this seven-year gold rush lost money. It is estimated that Little American is the only mine in the area that broke even. It yielded $10-$20 of gold per ton of ore.

Upon passing the next island the ranger pointed out the entrance to an abandoned horizontal gold mine.

Our next stop on the tour was the Harry Oveson Fish Camp.

Harry Oveson, an independent commercial fisherman, lived and worked here during the summers from 1959 to 1985. He spent his winters in Arizona.

The icehouse (ice cut from the lake) is on the left and fish cleaning building on the right. Up before dawn he harvested and processed 50 pounds of walleye and several hundred pounds of whitefish daily. His catch was packed in ice, ferried over to the mainland, loaded onto trains and taken to the market in Minneapolis. 

OBERHOLTZER TRAIL

We took a very nice 1.6-mile trail through conifer and deciduous forests featuring two bay overlooks on Rainy Lake.

Oyster Mushrooms amongst the wildflowers along the trail.

We stopped for a marina patio lunch on Rainy Lake to try some of the local delicacies such as chicken soup with wild rice, walleye and even fried cheese curds.