Superior National Forest

Records of the earliest humans to live here, the Paleo-Indian culture of 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, show that they pulled travois (a type of sled) and lived in skin tents. The Ojibwa Indians, sometimes called Chippewa, were residents in the forest when the voyageurs of the fur trade era came to trap beaver via birch bark canoes.

Though the voyageurs have gone, the Ojibwa still remain and possess a rich heritage that is inextricably linked to the forest. Ten thousand years ago, after the glaciers retreated from Northern Minnesota, a landscape of lakes, bogs, and bare rocky outcrops was left behind to form the boreal (meaning "northern") forest. The Superior National Forest is the only place in the continental United States where the boreal community thrives.