Voyageurs National Park

In Voyageurs National Park the main highway is water. Four large lakes, Rainy, Kabetogama, Namakan and Sand Point, wrap around hundreds of islands and the roadless Kabetogama Peninsula, which makes up most of the park's land and can be reached only by boat in summer or over the ice in winter. The park covers about 341 square miles (883 km²) along the Canadian border near International Falls, Minnesota. Its bedrock belongs to the Canadian Shield, some of the oldest exposed rock in North America, scraped bare by Ice Age glaciers.

The park takes its name from the voyageurs, French-Canadian canoemen who paddled these lakes in the 18th and 19th centuries carrying furs and trade goods between Montreal and the interior. Long before them, the Ojibwe and their predecessors fished and harvested wild rice here. Congress authorized the park in 1971, and it was established in 1975 as Minnesota's only national park. Today houseboats, kayaks and fishing boats replace birchbark canoes, and in winter the park plows ice roads across the frozen lakes. It was certified an International Dark Sky Park in 2020.

• Minnesota
  The Land of 10,000 Lakes, headwaters of the Mississippi located in
• Red Lake Nation
  The closed reservation around Minnesota’s largest lake near
• Isle Royale National Park
  Roadless Lake Superior island famed for its wolves and moose related
• Minneapolis
  The larger of the Twin Cities, on the Mississippi related