Chippewa National Forest

Chippewa National Forest is Minnesota lake country near the headwaters of the Mississippi -- more than 1,300 lakes, tall red and white pines, and one of the largest bald-eagle nesting concentrations in the Lower 48. It overlaps most of the Leech Lake Reservation -- about 90 percent of the reservation lies inside the forest -- and was renamed in 1928 to honor the Ojibwe people. Cool twist: the forest's Lost Forty, a patch of centuries-old virgin pine, only escaped the loggers because an 1882 survey crew mismapped it as a lake and everyone thought it was underwater.

The place

Chippewa National Forest sprawls across the lake country of north-central Minnesota, a low, green, water-soaked landscape near the headwaters of the Mississippi. The forest boundary takes in about 1.6 million acres, but only around 660,000 of that is actual national forest -- the rest is a checkerboard of tribal, state, county, and private land, stitched together by more than 1,300 lakes and ponds and hundreds of thousands of acres of wetland. It is a place defined by water and pine: three of Minnesota's ten largest lakes sit inside the boundary, bald eagles nest in the tall old pines along the shorelines, and loons call across the quiet bays. It is also deeply tied to the Ojibwe -- the forest overlaps most of the Leech Lake Reservation, with about 90 percent of the reservation lying inside its boundary, and took its name in 1928 to honor them.

History

The forest's roots reach back to 1902, when Congress set aside the Minnesota Forest Reserve under the Morris Act -- land bound up in the disposition of Leech Lake Reservation timber, and often described as having been created to benefit the Ojibwe rather than carved out of the western public domain like most national forests. It became the Minnesota National Forest in 1908, and the Forest Service still calls it the first national forest established east of the Mississippi River (fitting, since parts of it sit right on the young river). In 1928 it was renamed the Chippewa National Forest to honor the original inhabitants -- "Chippewa" being the older federal spelling of Ojibwe (Anishinaabe). The two remain closely bound: roughly 90 percent of the Leech Lake Reservation lies within the forest boundary, and the Forest Service and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe work the shared landscape together today under co-stewardship agreements rather than one simply managing the other's ground. The Civilian Conservation Corps left a heavy mark here in the 1930s, building roads, campgrounds, and the log Supervisor's Office in Cass Lake that the forest still works out of.

Wildlife & plants

This is famous eagle country -- the Chippewa has one of the highest bald-eagle breeding densities in the Lower 48, with hundreds of nests scattered across the forest, many of them tucked in the big old red and white pines along the lakeshores. Common loons -- Minnesota's state bird -- nest on the quieter waters, and gray wolves, black bears, and white-tailed deer roam the woods; moose reach the northern edges but are uncommon and have thinned out across the region. The lakes are serious fishing water: walleye above all (Leech Lake and Winnibigoshish are legendary for it), along with northern pike, muskie, and panfish. The forest itself is a northern mix -- red, white, and jack pine, aspen and paper birch, with black spruce and tamarack standing in the peat bogs.

Notable features

The forest's signature feature is its water -- more than 1,300 lakes and ponds and hundreds of miles of rivers and streams. Three of Minnesota's ten largest lakes -- Leech Lake, Lake Winnibigoshish ("Big Winnie"), and Cass Lake -- lie within the boundary, and the young Mississippi River, not far below its source at Lake Itasca, threads right through Cass Lake and Winnibigoshish on its way east and south. Its best-known landmarks are the old-growth pines of the Lost Forty, the restored Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Rabideau, and the log Cut Foot Sioux Ranger Station near Lake Winnibigoshish.

Cool to know

• The Lost Forty is a stand of virgin red and white pine -- some of the trees three to four centuries old -- that only survived the great logging boom because of a surveying mistake. In 1882 a crew working in winter mismapped the parcel as part of nearby Coddington Lake, so the timber cruisers who bought up everything else skipped it, thinking it lay underwater. The name is a bit of a joke, too: a standard survey "forty" is 40 acres, but the protected old-growth here actually runs closer to 144.
• Camp Rabideau is one of the best-preserved Civilian Conservation Corps camps left in the country -- the Forest Service calls it among the finest surviving examples anywhere. Built in 1935, it still has more than a dozen of its original buildings standing, and it is now a National Historic Landmark.
• The Cut Foot Sioux Ranger Station, built in 1908, is described by the Forest Service as the first ranger station established on the east side of the Mississippi and one of the oldest surviving Forest Service buildings in its Eastern Region. The log cabin was so far gone by the 1990s that it was carefully taken apart and rebuilt with new logs, so what stands today is a faithful reconstruction rather than the untouched original.
• Chippewa has an unusual origin among national forests: instead of being carved out of the western public domain, it grew out of Ojibwe reservation land under the 1902 Morris Act, and the Forest Service still calls it the first national forest established east of the Mississippi.
• Almost the entire Leech Lake Reservation -- something like 90 percent of it -- sits inside the Chippewa National Forest boundary, and the forest and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe share close to 2,000 miles of common boundary. Few national forests are so thoroughly interwoven with a tribal nation.
• For all its pines, the Chippewa is really a water forest -- more than 1,300 lakes and ponds, roughly 900 miles of rivers and streams, and hundreds of thousands of acres of wetland. The Forest Service reckons it holds on the order of an eighth of all the surface water in the entire National Forest System.