Grand Portage is the far north-eastern tip of Minnesota, where the highway runs out of country against the Canadian border and the Pigeon River. The name is literal. For more than a century, the French and then the British traders who dominated the fur trade carried their canoes and bales around the impassable rapids and falls of the Pigeon River along an eight-and-a-half-mile trail, which they called the Grand Portage, or great carrying place. In the 1780s the North West Company built a depot on the shore of Lake Superior, where canoes from Montreal met those from the interior, and every summer there was a rendezvous with trading, feasting and bargaining.
The depot has been partly rebuilt as Grand Portage National Monument, with a stockade, a great hall and a canoe warehouse, and rangers in period clothing. The land is part of the Grand Portage Reservation, home to a band of the Ojibwe, whose ancestors were here long before the traders, and who guided and fed the voyageurs. Offshore, Isle Royale lies in the lake, with a ferry running from the harbour in summer.
The North Shore Scenic Drive, Highway 61, brings you here along the edge of Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, a cold, deep, steel-blue expanse that is more like a sea. The road runs along cliffs of dark basalt, through forest of birch, spruce and pine, past rivers that plunge into the lake over waterfalls. The curves are gentle, the surface is good, and traffic is light except at summer weekends and in the autumn colour season. Just before the border, the High Falls of the Pigeon River, the highest waterfall in Minnesota, can be reached by a short trail.
Services are limited this far north. Grand Marais, a pretty harbour town about thirty-six miles south-west, has fuel, food and lodging, and it makes sense to fill up there. Bring warm clothing, since the lake keeps the air cold even in July, and fog can roll in from the water. Moose and wolves live in the surrounding forest, and the sight of a moose beside the road is a real hazard at dusk. Keep your passport handy if you plan to cross into Ontario, and expect border formalities.