Grand Portage Historic Depot!

What Is the Grand Portage Historic Depot?

This is a recreation of a historic North West Fur Company trading post at the end of the Grand Portage!

What Makes It Historical?

Starting in 1608, French explorers voyaged deep into Canada’s interior, known as the Pays d’en Haut, or upper countries! There, they found boodles of beavers and promptly started killing them to feed the European fashion industry! As they did so, they developed a network of rivers and the trails blazed by indigenous folks to bring their wilderness plunder back to cities. One of those paths was called Gichi Onigamiing, the “great carrying place,” which the French came to call La Grand Portage. Starting in 1730, French voyageurs used this 8.5-mile overland trail to carry their bounty from the Pigeon River to the shore of Lake Superior, where it could be shipped to Montreal!

Three decades later, the British won the Seven Years’ War, and gained Canada as a consequence! British companies learned about the Grand Portage shortly thereafter and began to set up shop here on the shore of Lake Superior. Among them was the North West Company, ironically founded just after the American Revolution by Simon McTavish, Benjamin & Joseph Frobisher, George McBeath, Robert Grant, William Holmes, Patrick Small, Nicholas Montour, and Peter Pond! It became the largest company on Lake Superior with over a thousand traders in its employ from Montreal and Scandinavia!

The depot here saw tons of motion: merchandise from all over the world arrived here to be trekked inland to Fort Charlotte, 180 pounds at a time, and distributed across Canada! Conversely, thousands of pounds of animal furs (182,000 beaver pelts in 1793 alone) came here from the interior to be shipped elsewhere in the world! Various tribes like the Ojibwe, Chippewa, and Assiniboines would also come here to trade food, canoes, and birch bark for blankets, tools, and guns, and they set the foundation for summer rendezvous that could be parties, weddings, ceremonies, you name it! The North West Company moved away from here in 1803 leaving the depot to ruin, but thanks to excavations between 1922 and the 1970s, three major buildings and the Grand Portage have been relocated and restored!

How Can I #HelpTheHelpers?

Volunteer at Grand Portage National Monument!
Donate to the National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation!
Be a responsible visitor! Please respect the signs and pathways, and treat all structures and artifacts with respect. They’ve endured a lot to survive into the present. They’ll need our help to make it into the future!