Iron County Heritage Area
The most popular gateway to the Flambeau Trail started here, on the shore of Oronto Bay. Also known as the "Montreal River Trail", it was the only route inland into the dense virgin forest until the late 1880's.The Trail was an ancient Indian trading and war route that connected LaPointe on Madeline Island to Lac du Flambeau, 90 miles to the south.
The first 45 miles of the Trail was a portage, an overland "bridge", linking Lake Superior to navigable river ways to the south.
When a lively commerce in fur trading began in the late 1700's, to satisfy European demand for beaver fur hats, the Trail became the "highway" over which trade goods were exchanged for fur pelts.
On this shore, French Canadian voyagers transferred cloth, gunpowder, and other trade goods, brought by canoe from the trading post at LaPointe, into 80 pound tote packs. Each voyager carried packs over the difficult "120 pause" portage, so named for the number of times they stopped to rest - about every one-half mile.
In exchange, millions of dollars of beaver pelts from the Northwest Trading Company post at Lac du Flambeau were toted back to this point destined for LaPointe, Quebec and finally Europe.
| HM Number | HMUBM |
|---|---|
| Tags | |
| Marker Condition | No reports yet |
| Date Added | Friday, September 26th, 2014 at 5:52am PDT -07:00 |
| UTM (WGS84 Datum) | 15T E 696403 N 5159686 |
|---|---|
| Decimal Degrees | 46.56203333, -90.43743333 |
| Degrees and Decimal Minutes | N 46° 33.722', W 90° 26.246' |
| Degrees, Minutes and Seconds | 46° 33' 43.32" N, 90° 26' 14.76" W |
| Driving Directions | Google Maps |
| Area Code(s) | 715 |
| Closest Postal Address | At or near 9997 Co Hwy A, Saxon WI 54559, US |
| Alternative Maps | Google Maps, MapQuest, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, MSR Maps, OpenCycleMap, MyTopo Maps, OpenStreetMap |
Is this marker missing? Are the coordinates wrong? Do you have additional information that you would like to share with us? If so, check in.
Comments 0 comments