North Shore Scenic Drive Minnesota: Duluth to Grand Marais

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Duluth

   Duluth is built on a hillside so steep that the streets look as if they were drawn by someone who had never seen a slope. The city climbs from the western tip of Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world by area, up a long ridge that gives a view of the harbour, the ore docks and the gleaming water from nearly every neighbourhood. At the foot of the hill, in Canal Park, the Aerial Lift Bridge rises to let ocean-going freighters pass in and out of the harbour, and the sound of its horn is as much a part of the city as the gulls. Tourists crowd the pier to watch the ships come in, some of them a thousand feet long.

   Read the complete Duluth write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Duluth is where the day begins. Next is Two Harbors.

2. 2. Two Harbors

   Two Harbors exists because of iron. When the Mesabi Range in northern Minnesota proved to hold some of the richest ore deposits in the world, the mining companies needed a way to get it to the steel mills of the lower Great Lakes, and a railway from the mines to Agate Bay on Lake Superior, completed in the 1880s, made the little port the first ore-shipping harbour in the state. The huge ore docks still stand on the waterfront, long black steel structures from which the red ore was loaded into the holds of lake freighters, and you can watch the great ships come and go. The town has about three and a half thousand people and is the first real stop on the North Shore after Duluth, which lies roughly forty kilometres south-west.

   Read the complete Two Harbors write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Two Harbors comes up about 44 km into the recorded legs. Next is Gooseberry Falls.

3. 3. Gooseberry Falls

   Gooseberry Falls is where the Gooseberry River tumbles over the edge of an ancient lava plateau on its way to Lake Superior, and it is the first big waterfall you meet on the North Shore. The river drops in three stages, the Upper, Middle and Lower Falls, over steps of dark basalt, and the water is stained the colour of tea by the tannins of the forest. The rock here is the product of an extraordinary event. About 1.1 billion years ago, the continent began to split along a rift that ran from what is now Lake Superior south-west toward Kansas, and enormous volumes of lava poured out, forming thick layers of basalt. The rift failed, but the rock remained, and the lake now fills the depression it left behind.

   Read the complete Gooseberry Falls write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 66 km into the recorded legs you reach Gooseberry Falls. Next is Split Rock Lighthouse.

4. 4. Split Rock Lighthouse

   Split Rock Lighthouse stands on a cliff of dark rock one hundred and thirty feet above the lake, and it is one of the best-known landmarks on the Great Lakes. It exists because of a storm. In November 1905 a ferocious gale swept across Lake Superior and wrecked or damaged some thirty ships, and the shipping companies, after counting the cost, demanded a beacon on this treacherous, rocky shore. The light was first lit in 1910, and for nearly sixty years it guided ore carriers along the coast, until modern navigation made it redundant and it was switched off in 1969. Today it is a state historic site, and visitors can climb the tower, walk through the keeper's house and see the Fresnel lens.

   Read the complete Split Rock Lighthouse write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Split Rock Lighthouse, late in the day. Next is Grand Marais.

5. 5. Grand Marais

   Grand Marais is where the road runs out of tame country. The little harbour town, tucked into a natural bay on the Lake Superior shore with the pine-covered hills behind it, is the end of the North Shore Scenic Drive for most visitors, and it feels like an outpost, a place that has made peace with long winters and short summers. The name is French, and means great marsh, though no marsh is evident, and the town was first a fur-trading and fishing post. The population is about thirteen hundred, but in July it is full of tourists, painters, canoeists and walkers, all drawn by the wild country to the north.

   Read the complete Grand Marais write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Grand Marais. That is the ride.