Most people think of traveling on Minnesota Highway 61 along Lake Superior as a way to travel across a landscape from one location to another. However, if you understand the history, it can also be a way to travel across time. Learning about the creation of the highway is one way to gain a deeper appreciation of how this road and the Minnesota North Shore’s landscape have transformed over time.
Ever since the glaciers retreated, people have been traveling along the northwest shore of Lake Superior. Today, some travelers still paddle or boat the shore, but most drive by taking Minnesota State Highway 61. The highway officially runs 150.321 miles from a junction with I-35 and 26th Avenue East in Duluth to its northern terminus at the Pigeon River Bridge over the international border between the United States and Canada.
Early Routes
From the 1600s through the mid-1800s, Indigenous, French, British, and American peoples paddled the northwest shore of Superior in the fur trade. In 1854, Anishinaabe people ceded the area to the United States.
By 1855, the fur trade in the Lake Superior region was beginning to decline, and the Soo Locks opened. For the first time, Lake Superior was opened to shipping travel with other Great Lakes. Since the mid-1600s, Lake Superior had been connected to economies around the globe through the fur trade, but the opening of the Soo Locks expanded these international connections since boats larger than canoes could now easily enter the watershed.
After the locks opened, steamboats arrived at local ports, and logging and mining industries grew. In the western part of the lake, Duluth became a significant port and a base for visitors to charter local boats to take them up the shore to camps where they hunted, fished, and explored what they considered to be “wilderness.” In reality, it was (and continues to be) the homelands of Anishinaabe peoples who had stewarded the land for generations.
When the lake was frozen or inhospitable to travel by water, the only other route was a footpath that generally followed the coast. Gradually, throughout the 19th century, this footpath grew into a sled dog road and then a wagon road. Eventually, this road became Minnesota Highway 61.
John Beargrease, an Anishinaabe man, was born near Beaver Bay and moved to Chippewa City (which was a community of mainly citizens of Grand Portage Anishinaabe several miles northwest of Grand Marais). Beargrease was influential in the road’s development and the modern-day namesake of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon.
Beginning in 1879, Beargrease was the mail carrier for the Minnesota North Shore. With his sons, they brought over 700 pounds of mail and packages each trip from Superior, WI, to Grand Marais, MN. In the summer, they hiked along the shore, sailed, or rowed a boat. In the winter, they made the trek by dog sled. Along with the mail, Beargrease was also a vital source of news and weather to communities.
John Beargrease made his last mail runs in 1899 when Lake Shore Road was completed between Two Harbors and Grand Marais. From this point on, the mail arrived by stagecoach.
Building a Highway, Connecting Communities
By the 1910s, North Shore visitors began to take their newly acquired automobiles on the road. In 1921, construction began to upgrade the road and extend it from Duluth to the Pigeon River. By the 1940s, the road had transitioned from dirt and gravel to pavement. The road contributed to the growing population and expansion of industries, including tourism, along the Minnesota North Shore.
The northernmost section, from Hovland to the Pigeon River, originally ran inland, bypassing the Grand Portage Anishinaabe Nation. Remnants of the original border crossing, known as the Outlaw Bridge, are still evident on both sides of the border.
Further modifications were made in the 1960s. In 1963, the road between Duluth and the Canadian border was commissioned as part of U.S. Highway 61 (whose southern terminus is in New Orleans). A four-lane express was also built inland of the original route that stretches for twenty-one miles between Duluth and Two Harbors. The original route remains open, allowing travelers to take the scenic route or the expressway. To this day, the remainder of the highway is a two-lane road with intermittent passing lanes.
After Interstate 35 was completed in the 1960s, U.S. Highway 61 was co-signed with I-35. In 1991, the federal highway was decommissioned from the Canadian border to its present-day junction with I-35 near Forest Lake, Minnesota. The section of US 61 north of Duluth was then redesignated as Minnesota State Highway 61.
Building a Highway, Bypassing a Cliff
Until 1994, motorists traveled directly along the edge of Silver Creek Cliff northeast of Two Harbors. Boulders and wooden guardrails were the only separation between the vehicles and a long fall into the lake. Frequent precipitation, seasonal freeze-thaw cycles, and wave erosion were constant issues for the highway in this section.
In the 1990s, The Minnesota Department of Transportation decided to address these challenges by creating a tunnel through Silver Creek Cliff that would bypass the cliff. They used modern tunnel-building techniques that had been used to build the nearby Lafayette Tunnel in 1991.
On July 29, 1994, the Silver Creek Tunnel opened with a celebration, including live music. A stream of classic cars was the first vehicle through the tunnel.
Highway 61 has been part of road trips my whole life. As a child, I remember heading south to Duluth or Minneapolis from Thunder Bay and waiting in our minivan in a line of vehicles surrounded by orange cones as Mn/DOT workers built the new tunnel.
Interestingly, I remember the construction wait times more than I remember the views from the original route! I do remember the excitement of getting to drive through the tunnel for the very first time. From that point on, going through the tunnel was always a highlight of the road trip.
Building a Highway, Creating Isolation
Throughout the Lake Superior watershed, the construction of highways has impacted the growth and decline of communities.
Built environments, a form of material culture that includes highways and other infrastructure, shape the character and health of communities. Highways are connectors, but they can also lead to isolation. Throughout the watershed, communities whose downtowns are off of the main highways that make up the Lake Superior Circle Tour–like Ontonagon and L’Anse in Michigan and Wawa and Red Rock in Ontario, need to be creative to divert tourism dollars into their downtowns.
But more than economic impacts, the development of highways also impacts families and communities on a personal level. Staci Lola Drouillard, a descendant of Grand Portage Anishinaabe Nation and families from Chippewa City explains:
“Between 1920 and 1920, the trail once used by [John] Beargrease had become an expansive, scenic highway connecting Duluth to the Canadian border. What began as a narrow path through the woods then became a trail for dogsleds and horses. For years after that, the thoroughfare was only able to accommodate horse-driven coaches.
By the 1920s, Model Ts were able to make the trip, and soon after that, what was then a craggy, gravel road became a two-lane paved artery suitable for all manner of cars trucks, and buses. The construction of this road, Highway 61, effectively cut Chippewa City and east Grand Marais in two, separating the church from the cemetery and forcing the destruction of many of the community’s homes and community gathering places.” (Walking the Old Road, 257-8)
Being able to understand how these impacts continue to effect communities is one of the reasons to learn the history of highways and other forms of infrastructure.
Minnesota Highway 61 Today
Visitors who want to appreciate Silver Creek Tunnel to admire the workmanship or imagine what it was like to drive along the edge of Silver Creek cliff can stop at the wayside on the north end of tunnel. After parking, take a short walk southwest along the paved Gichigami Trail (which is also open to bicycles).
Within about a quarter of a mile, you will reach the lookout, which features expansive views and educational signs. The boulders and guardrails between the trail and lake are similar to what protected motorists from the cliffs edge before the tunnel was built.
Much like in the early 1900s, the highway continues to play an important role in the economic industries of the region, including tourism and mining. Shifting the highway through a tunnel has also created a draw for rock climbers, offering them another spot along the Minnesota North Shore to hone their skills. Today, there are numerous state parks featuring stunning waterfalls (like High Falls), state natural areas (including Sugarloaf Cove), and scenic wayside rest areas along Minnesota Highway 61. They all offer beautiful scenery and opportunities to delve more into the region’s geologic, environmental, and sociocultural histories.
Today, travelers will also see evidence of the role of mining in the past and present, including the Northshore Mining Company (owned by Cleveland Cliffs) in Silver Bay and the coal-powered plant in Taconite Harbor that was officially retired in March 2023. Visitors can learn more about Taconite Harbor at the Cross River Heritage Center in Schroeder, Minnesota.
These juxtaposing images of natural scenery and extractive industries along Highway 61 reflect the multifaceted forces that have shaped the history of the Minnesota North Shore and the whole Lake Superior region since the signing of land cession treaties in the mid-nineteenth century.
References
Signs and historic markers along MN Highway 61 were influential in this post.
To learn more about Chippewa City or John Beargrease, I suggest Staci Lola Drouillard, Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019).
