7/26 - Itasca State Park and the Mississippi

The weather today has been spectacular....clear blue skies, a cool breeze and upper 70's with comfortable humidity. Perfect! It made for a great day to visit Itasca State Park, home of the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The park is only ten miles from our campground.


To start things off we missed the turn to the actual headwaters. By the time we were sure we'd missed it we were half way to the visitors center at the other end of the lake so we just kept going. Itasca isn't a large lake so it wasn't a big deal. After making our rounds of the visitors center's displays and getting more than our fill of screaming children, it was time for lunch. We found the nearby restaurant at the Douglas Lodge which is right on the lake, waited our turn (about 25 minutes) and got a table with a slight view of the lake through the woods. (There's not much of a view of the lake from any point except hiking trails because of the dense woods.)

Douglas Lodge and Restaurant 

The food was good but overpriced (they have a captive audience with no other choices) and there was another crop of screaming children to be endured. Between the children, the extremely loud group of adults next to us and the clattering and banging of tables being cleared, it was a great relief to get back outside with peace and quiet. The older we get the more we hate excessive noise.

Next up was returning to the north end of the lake to find the actual headwaters. This time we were successful. The paved path from the parking lot to the site is only 800 feet long so it's very easy to get to. 

Headwaters marker several decades ago

New headwaters marker today, similar but not the same one

Water leaving Lake Itasca to form the infant Mississippi

A lot of people looked for the real source of the Mississippi for many years. There were five incorrect identifications before the real source was finally found by a European-American. It could have been found the first time around if anyone had bothered to ask the Ojibwe where it was. This was their land and they knew exactly where it was all along. They didn't attach any significance to it, though, believing that the river itself was the important thing, not its source.

 Jim crossing the 18-foot wide Mississippi by foot-bridge

Val walking through the Mississippi (with shoes on)

More of a creek than a river, definitely not even 18-feet wide here

I always thought the name Itasca must be an Indian word. Not so. The real source of the name is much more interesting. From the Itasca State Park website: In 1832, Anishinabe guide Ozawindib led explorer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft to the source of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca. It was on this journey that Schoolcraft, with the help of an educated missionary companion, created the name Itasca from the Latin words for "truth" and "head" by linking adjoining syllables: verITAS CAput, meaning "true head." 

As Schoolcraft got older and became very knowledgeable about Ojibwe culture he regretted using Latin words to name the lake but it was too late to change it.

Tomorrow we'll check out the museums in Bemidji and the tiny town of Cass Lake.