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Voyageurs National Park was officially established on April 8, 1975. The area that makes up the park was first proposed as a national park in April 1891 by the Minnesota legislature. However, it wasn’t until nearly eighty years later, after protracted public and legislative conflict, that federal legislation authorizing the creation of the park was signed into law on January 8, 1971.
Voyageurs National Park gets its name from a past when French Voyageurs traveled the lakes and rivers of the “border route” between Grand Portage and Lake Athabasca, but the history of the park is even fuller and richer than that colorful era. Paleo-Indians first inhabited the area some 10,000 years ago. The park boasts more than 200 intact archaeological sites dating to European settlement. Logging, mining, and commercial fishing boomed in the area in the late-19th and early 20th centuries. The native forests of the area were coveted for their tall pines. The Little America gold mine started operation in the mid-1890s and spawned the town of Rainy Lake City. By 1898 the mine was closed and by 1906 Rainy Lake City was a ghost town. Commercial fishing boomed and faded at a less precipitous pace, but the long distances to market made profits less than desirable and the enterprise faded away.
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