Big Bog State Recreation Area

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Big Bog State Recreation Area.

Big Bog State Recreation Area, a recent addition to the Minnesota state park system, is located on Minnesota State Highway 72, north of Waskish Township, Minnesota. It covers 9459 acres (38.3 km²), primarily swamps, bogs, and upland "islands". Started by local grassroots efforts in 2002, it became a state recreation area and officially opened in June, 2006.

Common trees include tamarack, tag alder, cedar, diamond willow, black and white spruce, jackpine, and green and black ash with paper birch, "popple" or quaking aspen, white and red pines in the uplands. There are numerous rare plants, including carnivorous sundews and pitcher plants. Animals include bald eagles, timber wolves, black bears, white-tailed deer, and an occasional moose.

Although the term "Big Bog" hasn't been widely used by the locals until recently, it is a fitting name, as it is composed mostly of wetlands and is larger than the state of Rhode Island. The name had shown up previously in maps, such as by the National Geographic Society. The greater Big Bog region stretches from jackpine forests north of Upper Red Lake in Beltrami County, Minnesota and Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota to the communities along highway 71 leading to International Falls (Mizpah, Minnesota, Margie, Indus, and Littlefork, Minnesota) in Koochiching County, Minnesota. It is also almost entirely unpopulated, except for the town of Waskish along highway 72.

[edit] History

The Big Bog sits on the southeast side of glacial Lake Agassiz, formed during the last ice age. This former lake bottom is quite flat, with occasional hills of gravel deposits or rock. As the lake drained, this area slowly filled in with wetland plants and animals. The Ojibwe Indian tribe gathered blueberries, fished, and hunted game here until the late 1800s. In the 1920s and 1930s virtually all areas in the vicinity had their majestic old growth pine trees cut down as a massive logging effort swept through, but because of the swampy nature and lack of large stands of mature pines, the Big Bog area was relatively untouched. (Also see the Lost Forty in the Chippewa National Forest). Some efforts have been made to drain portions or harvest the peat, but met with little success. Scattered communities of mixed farming were relocated from some of the more remote areas during rural reform as part of the Rural Electrification Act during the 1930s and 1940s. The fishing-dependent community suffered after a disastrous fall in wall-eyed trout population in neighboring Upper Red Lake during the 1990s. In 2002 members of the Upper Red Lake Association pushed the idea of a new state park, soon after nearly 10,000 acres (40 km²) were classified as the Big Bog State Recreation Area.

[edit] Bog Walk

A recent addition to the Big Bog State Recreation Area is an artificial bog walk which allows visitors to explore one mile into the "islands" of spruce within the bog, as well as the open wetlands. The board walk was designed to allow for up to 37% of natural sunlight to fall through it allowing for the delicate bog plants to continue to grow under the walkway.