The St. Croix
An exposé on a river that divides and connects.
A river that demands respect is a river that creates boundaries; a power so unbreakable it decides state lines and forces the most dominating species into submission. In the United States, the most prominent of these rivers is the mighty Mississippi. Author upon author has attempted to capture its countrywide reign while its northern tributary, the St. Croix, remains largely untouched.
The St. Croix runs a fraction within one state as the Mississippi, however when it comes to the Minnesota and Wisconsin border their representation is practically equal. The St. Croix has the benefit of being thinner and cleaner than the Mississippi, and is protected by the Scenic Rivers Act of 1968 which has kept modern development from capitalizing its shores of birch and white pine.
It begins in Wisconsin, a few hundred miles south of the cold waters of Lake Superior. As the St. Croix progresses it builds strength, collecting the Kettle, Snake and Sunrise River from the west and the Apple, Willow and Kinnickinnic from the east. At about 37 miles, just past the Namekagon River confluence, the St. Croix matures into a wider and more powerful waterway where it joins the new world as the Wisconsin-Minnesota border.
From its beginnings near Solon Springs to its eventual feeding into the Mississippi, the St. Croix is a history of nature and man.
The basaltic shoreline tells a volcanic story in steep walls of bedrock over 10,000 years old. Walls carved out from glaciers long retreated to the north. Above these walls, along the backs of the bluffs, potholes a 100-feet deep spot where ice age floods caught stones in their current and, trapped in a dip in the riverbed, were spun like threads of yarn — grinding out descending pits until they themselves were grains of dust.
The Ojibwe called the upper half “Manoominikeshiinh-ziibi”, or Ricing-Rail River, and the bottom half “Gichi-ziibi” meaning Big River. By the time the settlers had discovered and began to name the St. Croix, first “Rivière Tombeaux” meaning “the river of the grave” and later after the St. Croix Fort located near the upper reaches of the river, the Ojibwe were at war with the Dakota and the St. Croix had become a divisive natural element between three forces. This ended when the Ojibwe acquired valuable ammunition and weapons from the traders and forced the Dakota out in the Battle of Kathio.
Peace did not last however and a war between the Native Americans was swapped for a war between the French and the British in the French and Indian War. The victorious British joined the North West Company and became the influential traders on the St. Croix. With their power and finance, the two parties bought land from the Ojibwe so the great logging industry could begin. From there the St. Croix became a crucial source of transportation for the forests of the north to the hungry sawmills of St. Croix Falls, Marine on the St. Croix and the booming milltown of Stillwater — the town where the proposal for the state of Minnesota was later made in 1848.
Now the St. Croix is a protected natural landmark. A place to paddle in a kayak or canoe, where plentiful campsites can be visited at minimal cost beside residencies of the warbler and waterthrush. Its scarred shore of steep cliffs and abandoned timber speak: great rivers create boundaries. They are dominating forces that’s strength outlives those that attempt to conquer it. It takes generations to understand this. A secret of the paddle stroke learned from the echoed knock of the Ojibwe; a modus operandi to keep their hollowed-out canoes facing downstream into beds of wild rice to be filled by forked poles, threshing kernel from chaff.
