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Visiting Minnesota’s Lake Itasca State Park, The Source Of The Mississippi River
The First Americans called it “Father Of Waters” in Algonkian. The Mississippi begins its 2,552-mile journey across the United States, flowing through a ribbon of rocks as it exits Minnesota’s Lake Itasca as an 18-foot-wide brook you can easily wade across. Don’t try that in New Orleans, where that same river is 200 feet deep. Mark Twain masterfully describes the river that molded him in his work, Life On The Mississippi.
To understand it and gain a respect for what you are viewing, Twain’s love letter to the river is a must-read for any traveler eyeing a road trip along the world’s fourth-longest waterway and second longest in North America. It’s bested only by the Mississippi’s tributary, the Missouri.
Understanding that the river tests everyone on it is also a “must.” The riverboatmen like Twain knew when he was a steamboat pilot, and current pilots easing their multi-barge “tows” around the river’s ever-changing bends, bars, and snags and through its upper locks, must still study and learn of changes from their fellow pilots on every trip.
This river shapes nearly all of us. The streams and brooks of 31 states—41%of the country—drain into it, from as far east as New York, and as far west as Montana. Even Alberta, Canada, makes a donation. It is the main way America exports many of its heartland products, and that’s why a trip to where it all begins is so worthwhile, if only to say you made that wade across it.
It is truly amazing that in only a few miles after it trickles over the rocky ledge at the lake into a pool, disappearing into brush-enveloped banks, it becomes a full-blown river. In about 50 miles, it becomes Lake Winnibigoshish, where I wouldn’t dare try to swim across, let alone wade.
Itasca, by the way, is a totally made-up word. Not Native American, not anything. The European discoverer of the river’s source, geologist and Native American studies expert Henry Schoolcraft, found the source with the help of a Native American. He combined two Latin words, verITAS (truth) and CAput (head), for the true head of the river. Schoolcraft County in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was named after him because he was the regional Indian agent based in Sault Ste. Marie. He was also friends with the American poet Longfellow, who, with Schoolcraft’s help, counted the epic Song of Hiawatha among his works.
Itasca State Park is also the start and end of the Great River Road, another in our series of Great American Drives that includes the Blue Ridge Parkway, Parts one and two, the Natchez Trace Parkway, and California’s Pacific Coast Highway. We’ll be highlighting more segments in the future. You can’t cover a 2,069-mile road trip like this in just one. This one is about Itasca, which we visited in our 2023 Wonder Murphy Bed Lounge, Lucky Us Too, during a trip west.
It took us about two days to explore the park, enough to wade its source, and experience some of the park’s highlights, including the Great River Road’s beginning and end point.
After finding our spot at the heavily wooded 220-site campground, we drove to the park’s north end—yup, the river first flows north—to do that wade that you must do when you come.
It’s accessible at the Mary Gibbs Mississippi Headwaters Center. Gibbs, a staunch conservationist who battled loggers to preserve the area, became the nation’s first female park commissioner in 1903.
Stop by the scale model of the river’s course to follow it from here all the way to New Orleans. Then walk a quarter-mile trail through the woods she helped preserve to wobble off rocks and set foot in water that in about three months, moving at an average of a little more than a mile an hour, will finally flow past the Crescent City on its way to the Gulf.
That curious “begin/end” sign for the Great River Road is also near, at the intersection of another road you’ll want to drive or bike, the one-way,10-mile-long Wilderness Drive.
Stop at several spots to hike short trails and see markers, including one noting that the spot was a bison trail. Yup, bison once roamed as far east as New York and Virginia, nearly to the Atlantic.
The Jacob Brower Visitor Center is near the end of the drive. It’s named for another conservationist who fought to halt logging in the area and preserve the headwaters. Brower is considered to be the “father” of Lake Itasca State Park and of Minnesota’s state park system. A stop here provides more insight into the park.
There are more than 100 lakes in the park, many of which are accessible for kayaks or paddleboards, including Itasca. Bike? Pedal 16 miles of paved routes linking the most visited areas with the campground. Miles of trails await, with overnights available at either trailside cabins or pack-in campsites.
If you’ve a mind, spend the next three months wending your way south along the Great River Road to finally arrive in New Orleans, in time to wave at the bit of Lake Itasca you stepped in or held, as it nears the end of its own journey.
When You Go
Reserve your Itasca State Park site here.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://leisurevans.com/blog/shortstop-the-father-of-waters-and-great-river-road-part-1/