Pondering the quiet grounds of the Grand Portage National Monument that overlook the vast emptiness of Lake Superior, you stretch to think that this site once was one of the busiest spots on the continent west of the Appalachians.
The swath of grass within a palisade of cedar logs is lush, even more so in odd rectangles where it's been left uncut. Turns out these overgrown shapes are a clever way of showing where buildings once stood, and where an empire flourished.
From 1784 to 1803, hundreds of trappers, traders, Indians and voyageurs would gather at this slight harbor just south of what now is the U.S.-Canada border to do business.
And what business! At one time, 70 percent of the world's fur trade flowed from the region's interior down to the lakeshore, to be loaded into massive 40-foot canoes and taken east to Montreal, to London, to Moscow — all in the name of fashion.
Specifically, beaver hats.
In its best year, more than 183,000 beaver pelts came through this main depot of the North West Co. Today, visitors in Gore-Tex and polar fleece learn from historical re-enactors about building birchbark canoes, grading pelts, baking bread and making a living in conditions that were at once backbreaking, bawdy and bucolic.
The popular Rendezvous Days and Powwow, on the second weekend in August, brings crowds. But a visit at almost any other time offers a better opportunity to browse at leisure, to have all of your questions answered, to pause long enough to envision a crew of cocksure voyageurs, their fringed sashes catching the breeze, arriving to feast and dance at the annual Rendezvous.
In other words, at a monument where having 200 visitors counts as a busy day, Grand Portage offers the rare opportunity not only to learn about the past, but to truly step away from the present.
