People of the lake country in northern Minnesota were a resourceful bunch during the late 1800s and early 1900s and, true to human nature, they were determined to make life easier. Among their inventions: mechanical portages. Such ingenuity eliminated the legwork in shouldering heavy loads across land from one body of water to the next.
Today, that might be a welcome sight for paddlers of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness whenever the next portage looms along the shoreline. Trouble is, mechanical portages are almost extinct — but not quite.
Superior National Forest archives cite the first mechanical portage construction from 1898-1902. They were used for railroad logging. Locomotives hauled massive board-feet of timber across land for later transport on water to mills in the region. Similar portages, constructed in 1912 and 1920, featured motorized systems powered by gasoline engines and winches, rather than steam engines. Winch cables pulled trolleys and watercraft along narrow-gauge rails.
Over time, rails from early logging portages were removed and some portage trails were improved for small trucks to carry boats and cargo. The first such portage was built in 1938 by a resort owner. Other mechanical portages used nonmotorized devices powered by grunt labor such as portage wheels for carting boats, or rollers to glide boats across.
Some controversy arose regarding government agencies issuing special-use permits to private portage operators on public land. Soon, government officials recognized the importance of special-use regulations.
Two truck/ATV portages and five portage-wheel routes are currently permitted in the Superior National Forest. But only two motorized rail portages and one roller portage still remain. Here's some back-story on these final three.
Beatty portage
According to a Superior Forest memo in 1964, James Beatty opened a rail portage in 1913 with the permission of the Canadian government. At the time, the portage was on the Canadian side. However, the International Boundary Committee changed the boundary in 1928 to follow the drainage from Lac La Croix to Loon Lake. A 1.58-acre land transfer from Canada to the U.S. was approved in 1940.
Beatty operated the portage and made improvements until 1915. Documentation of subsequent operators after the close of commercial fishing activities in the boundary waters is somewhat sketchy until 1942 when Eino Maki received the first special-use permit. The use of the portage (which is 50 rods, or just less than one-fifth of a mile) was contrary to the government's management plan of the area. However, it was an accepted use of the land transfer at the time, and they agreed to live with it.