Минесота штатындағы Гранд-Портаж мемлекеттік паркі

State park in Minnesota, United States

Grand Portage State Park is a state park at the northeastern tip of the U. S. state of Minnesota, on the Canada–United States border. It contains a 120 feet (37 m) waterfall, the tallest in the state (though it is on the border with Canada and thus partially in Ontario), on the Pigeon River. The High Falls and other waterfalls and rapids upstream necessitated a historically important portage on a fur trade route between the Great Lakes and inland Canada. This 8.5 mile (14 km) path as well as the sites of historic forts at either end are preserved in nearby Grand Portage National Monument. The state park, held by the surrounding Grand Portage Indian Reservation and leased to the state of Minnesota for $1 a year, is the only U. S. state park jointly managed by a state and a Native American band. It is also the only Minnesota state park not owned by the state.

During the Paleoproterozoic era from 2.2 to 1.9 billion years ago, mud and muddy sand accumulated on the bed of a shallow sea. These sediments compacted into layers of shale and graywacke. Dubbed the Rove Formation, they are among the oldest unmetamorphosed sedimentary rock on earth. 1.1 billion years ago the North American Plate began to crack in the middle, and lava flowed out of this Midcontinent Rift System creating the distinctive basalt of Lake Superior's North Shore (and Interstate Park to the south). In what is now Grand Portage State Park, upwelling magma did not reach the surface but intruded into fractures in the Rove Formation, cooling more slowly into diabase rather than basalt. One set of intrusions formed northeast to southwest trending sills while a later event formed northwest to southeast trending dikes. Together they are known as the Logan Intrusions after Canadian geologist William Edmond Logan. On sunny days rainbows are often visible in the falls' mist.

Mammalian species of this park include white tailed deer, moose, Canadian lynx, black bear, red fox, porcupine, pine marten, river otter, beaver, snowshoe hare, skunk, and red squirrel with the occasional coyote and timber wolf. Waterfowl and raptors such as osprey frequent the Pigeon River, which also attracts walleye, northern pike, and rainbow smelt for their spring spawning.

At the beginning of historical times Grand Portage and the Pigeon River lay along the border between Dakota land to the south and Cree to the north. By the early eighteenth century Ojibwe arrived in the area, expanding as middlemen in the fur trade with the French. The Pigeon River, an otherwise useful route from the Great Lakes to inland Canada, was impassable over its last 22 mile (35 km) due to the waterfalls and rapids. To avoid this stretch early native inhabitants developed a footpath known as Kitchi Onigaming in the Ojibwe language, a name translated by French commercial explorers as Grand Portage, or "the Great Carrying Place." While busy outposts sprang up at either end of the Grand Portage and along routes in the interior, the future Grand Portage State Park remained largely undeveloped. The region was claimed by the French, then passed to the British following the French and Indian War under the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Following the independence of the United States the Arrowhead Region of Minnesota was disputed with British Canada. In 1842 the Webster–Ashburton Treaty finally settled the Pigeon River as the international border. When the U. S. began negotiating the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe with the region's Ojibwe, hard bargaining Grand Portage band leaders such as Adikoons secured a reservation within their traditional territory instead of being displaced west. Johnson, who in the 1930s and 40s had sold hundreds of thousands of acres to the U. S. Forest Service to help create Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, agreed to sell and donate a further Since the land was within the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, the state park bill was drafted with several provisions establishing a novel collaboration. Legislation establishing the park passed unanimously in both houses of the Minnesota Legislature in 1989. As a result of the COVID 19 pandemic in the United States, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources temporarily closed Grand Portage State Park on April 10, 2020 at the request of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

The High Falls is at the end of a gentle 0.5 mile (1 km) paved trail and boardwalk. Three wooden decks provide different angles to view the falls. A further 3.5 mile (6 km) of hiking trail leads to the 30 feet (9 m) Middle Falls and provides distant views of Lake Superior and Isle Royale from hilltops. The new facility complements the large travel center in Gooseberry Falls State Park, bookending the eight state parks along Minnesota's North Shore. Since the High Falls of the Pigeon River is shared with Ontario, the 70 feet (21 m) High Falls on the Baptism River in Tettegouche State Park is often touted as "the highest waterfall entirely within Minnesota."