Grand Portage National Monument

Reconstructed North West Company trading headquarters in extreme northeastern Minnesota. Since the NWC was a Canadian firm, it wasn't particularly welcome at this location, and moved north in 1802. This reconstruction dates from the 1950s. Reconstructions of historic buildings are not currently fashionable, so this complex is a bit of an anomoly within the National Parks system. It's a little misleading; there's the stockade, three buildings, logs marking the locations of a couple more structures, and a couple gardens; outside the fence there are mockups of voyageur and Indian settlements which are much smaller than the originals they are standing in for. The overall effect is rather parklike, and pleasant, but it lacks the bustle and interest of what was certainly a small village within the stockade; there were nearly twenty buildings in the place in the late eighteenth century. What is there is absolutely delightful. Where Colonial Michilimackinac, a similar place, overwhelms you with buildings and explanations, this monument maximizes its impact by concentrating on getting some crucial details just right. Reenactors serve as hosts and move comfortably between their historical personas and their modern selves, and the buildings house some carefully selected artifacts, arranged pretty much as you'd expect them to be arranged in a real trading post. The larger building, on the right, is the great hall; the smaller building is the kitchen which fed the traders and company officers when they were at the headquarters. The third building, a boat house, is outside the stockade.

This pretty much reverses yesterday's Grand Portage photo; I was standing about where that guy was, and this photo was taken from between the Great Hall and the kitchen. The stockade and the boathouse show in this pic. Looks like I'll be doing these daily for a bit....

Grand Portage National Monument, far northern Minnesota.

It's 1802, and the flag of the North West Co, a Canadian fur-trading company with a British charter, is still operating its remote headquarters at Grand Portage at the western end of Lake Superior. We sometimes call this "The willing suspension of disbelief." Grand Portage National Monument in northern Minnesota. That's Lake Superior beyond the stockade.

Another view of the North West Company's Great Hall at Grand Portage. Apparently all the partners would gather here to make corporate policy. It was pretty near the center of a coast-to-coast operation, so that sort of makes sense; on the other hand, transportation to remote Lake Superior must have been quite a project for the Montreal-based partners in the late 1700s, when this outpost was flourishing.

The stockade, the roof of the Great Hall, and the "voyageur campground" show in this view from the dock at Grand Portage National Monument, on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. That's Joan, of course, walking on the dock. The dock, of course, is not part of the reconstruction. It is, however, the boarding point for two of the Isle Royale ferries.

One last view of Grand Portage National Monument, on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota.

Better LARGE . Menu by the kitchen door at Grand Portage National Monument, on Lake Superior in extreme northern Minnesota. We're supposed to imagine that the cook was preparing a meal for 100 guests, to be served in the great hall. She had one planked fish done when we visited, and was working on the Rhubarb Crisp.

Late eighteenth-century kitchen tools beside the cooking fire at Grand Portage National Monument, on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. It was quite clear to us that the friendly lady overseeing the kitchen could explain and demonstrate every one of these.