Lake Itasca

Lake Itasca
Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan (Ojibwe)
The primary source of the Mississippi River on the edge of Lake Itasca
Lake Itasca Show map of Minnesota Lake Itasca Show map of the United States
Location	Itasca State Park, Clearwater County, Minnesota, US
Coordinates	47°13′05″N 95°12′26″W / 47.21806°N 95.20722°W / 47.21806; -95.20722
Type	Glacial
Primary inflows	Nicolet Creek, Elk Lake outlet stream
Primary outflows	Mississippi River
Basin countries	United States

Surface area	1.8 sq mi (4.7 km²)
Average depth	20–35 ft (6–11 m)
Surface elevation	1,475 ft (450 m)

Islands	Schoolcraft Island

Lake Itasca (/aɪˈtæskə/ eye-TASS-kə)^[1] is a small glacial lake, approximately 1.8 square miles (470 hectares; 1,200 acres) in area. It is located in Itasca State Park, in south-eastern Clearwater County, in the Headwaters area of north-central Minnesota, and is notable for being the headwater of the Mississippi River. It has an average depth of 20 to 35 feet (5 to 10 m) and is 1,475 feet (450 m) above sea level.

The Ojibwe name for the lake is Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan (Elk Lake). The first European explorers in the area were French Canadian and they named the lake Lac labiche (Doe Lake, often mistranslated as Elk Lake).^[2] The name was later changed by Henry Schoolcraft to "Itasca", coined from a combination of the Latin phrase veritas caput ("true head [of the Mississippi]").^[3]^[4] It is one of several examples of pseudo-Native American place names created by Schoolcraft.

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The headwaters of the Mississippi River, have long been a major attraction for summer tourists in Northwestern Minnesota. At Itasca State Park, you could walk on the rocks and over the shallow stream that mark the beginning of the Mississippi River. [bass, drums, and guitar play in bright rhythm] (woman) It's a great place to work, but the hardest part is everyone, when they're here, they're on vacation. [laughs] Itasca State Park is Minnesota's oldest state park. It began in 1891; it was set aside by the state legislature after a big push from a guy named Jacob Vandenberg Brower. who came to this area and found that it was a very important spot that should be preserved for future generations. One thing is that the park is very large. It's over 32,000 acres, so there's definitely a lot of places to get out and explore. Everything opens by Memorial Day weekend and goes through fall colors, which typically is about mid October. But the park is open year around, and so people can come to the park any time of the year. Each year we have around a half million people that visit Itasca State Park. We have very good visitor numbers that come from the State of Minnesota, as well as North Dakota, Canada, Iowa, Illinois, the surrounding states, as well as from all over the United States and countries from all over the world. They come to this area for a wide variety of reasons. Some come just to see the headwaters of the Mississippi River, others will come to camp, bike, hike. In the fall we have a deer hunting season that goes on, as well as when we get into winter season, we have skiing, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, we have year-round housing in the park so people could stay here. We actually have one of our campgrounds open to primitive camping in the wintertime too. So you could camp here year around if you wanted to get into the winter months as well. There's plenty to do whether you're here in the summer, the spring or fall or winter, and it's a good representation of what Northern Minnesota used to look like all the way across.

Source of the Mississippi River

It is the primary source^[a] of the Mississippi River which flows 2,340 mi (3,770 km) to the Gulf of Mexico. There are several tributaries that flow (most or all of the year) into the lake, one of which, by most modern definitions, as with the Nile River and Amazon River, would be considered the actual source, though less dramatic than the lake's outflow. Henry Schoolcraft identified Lake Itasca as the river's primary source in 1832. He had been part of a previous expedition in 1820 led by General Lewis Cass that had named nearby Cass Lake (which is downstream from Itasca) as the source of the river. There exists a dissenting claim that fur trader William Morrison was the first person to discover the lake and identified it as the source of the Mississippi in 1804.^[7]

The western arm of the lake is fed by two streams on its south end. Nicollet Creek starts in a nearby spring. Another small stream leads into Itasca from Elk Lake,^[b] which in turn is fed by two other streams. The Ojibwa called Elk Lake and the stream Bekegamaag-zaaga'igan and Bekegamaag-ziibi (Sidelake Lake and Sidelake River), respectively.^[2] In 1887 Williard Glazier promoted a campaign to consider Elk Lake, which he called Glazier Lake, as the true source of the Mississippi. Its longest tributary originates at Little Elk Lake, which is 100 ft (30 m) higher in elevation and 11 km upstream from the Lake Itasca outflow, at 47°09′29″N 95°13′26″W / 47.158°N 95.224°W / 47.158; -95.224 and in the Mississippi watershed.

Jacob V. Brower, a land surveyor and president of the Minnesota Historical Society, after spending five months exploring the lakes, claimed that the lakes and streams further south of Lake Itasca were not the true source of the Mississippi because they were "too small". Modern explorers and geographers, however, have used the tiniest trickles of water to determine the source of the Amazon, Nile, and other rivers. Brower was to campaign aggressively to save the lake from logging. On April 21, 1891, the Minnesota Legislature officially made it a state park by a margin of one vote. Brower is now called the "Father of Lake Itasca" and the visitor center is named in his honor.^[8]

The channel of the Mississippi as it emerges from the lake was bulldozed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, to create a more "pleasant experience" for visitors. The project included the draining of the surrounding swamp, the digging of a new channel, and the installation of a man-made rock rapids. The rocks are used by tourists for walking across the Mississippi River.^[9]^[10]

Common ground for science

The lake is home to the University of Minnesota's Itasca Biological Station and Laboratories campus, which offers spring and summer courses and field research work year-round. The campus was established in 1909.^[11] Some of these buildings date from the 1930s and 40s, while others, including the largest building the Biome Center, were built more recently. The current Director of the biological station is Jonathan Schilling.^[12]

The Lake Itasca region claims a unique location, not only at the headwaters of the Mississippi River and amidst 25% of the old growth forest of Minnesota, but also at the juncture of the three great habitats of North America: the Great Plains, the Deciduous Forest of the south, and the Coniferous Forest of the north. Remnants of all three may be observed in the park.^[13]

The unique geography of the Lake Itasca region has found its way onto the classical music concert stage. Composer Ferde Grofé depicted the birthplace of the Mississippi River and the Native Americans who reside there in his popular classical epic the Mississippi Suite.^[14]

Notes

^ The United States Geological Survey recognizes two contrasting definitions of a river's source.^[5] By the stricter definition, the Mississippi would share its source with its longest tributary, the Missouri, at Brower's Spring in Montana. The other definition acknowledges "somewhat arbitrary decisions" and places the Mississippi's sources at Lake Itasca, which is publicly accepted as the source of the Mississippi,^[5] identified as such by a late 1800s surveyor Brower.^[6]
^ See the article on Julius Chambers on the discovery of Elk Lake.