North
Country Trail - Itasca
State Park to the Old
Headquarters Site
East to West through Clearwater County, Minnesota
By Harvey
Johnson, Bad Medicine
Lake, Friend of the Itasca Moraine Chapter
Editor note: this essay to be transferred to the
Laurentian Lakes Chapter site when operational
Leaving the Itasca Park
Section of the trail, you begin the Bad Medicine Lake Section. (Early Indians
in the area thought that a lake with neither inlet nor outlet was a place of
bad omen {"bad medicine"} and would not hunt or fish near the
lake.) In this area you find a continuation of hardwood forest of oak, maple
and birch on fairly level terrain. As you would expect, this region is
especially beautiful in the fall, with shades of red of the maples, the
bronze of oaks and the curdled gold of poplar and birch. With luck you will
have picked a day when the deep blue of an autumn sky arches above the canopy
of leaves.
In spring the scenery is equally as beautiful
with young pale green leaves; when catkins of maples spin to the ground and
the cotton of budding aspen drifts on the breeze.
A walk westward to Mile 0.6 brings you to The
Anchor-Mattson road, and just beyond, to the kiosk marking the trailhead.
This is a convenient starting point for day hikes. A cleared area provides
parking for cars. If you arrived by car you passed the ruins of a CCC Camp a
short distance north of Highway 113. It was built in the 1930¹s to house
the young men who worked at road building in the area during The Great
Depression.
The trail continues west from the kiosk and
enters an area of hills and valleys, and a woods gradually changing to pines.
At Mile 1.0 (All mileage is measured from the point where you left Itasca Park) you will cross a logged-over
slashing and a deep valley. Here is one of the few places on the trail where
switch-backs ease the climb to the next ridge. The trail meanders in a
generally WSW direction as it follows a series of rocky ridges. Look to both
sides of the trail where deep valleys, although pleasing to the eye, would
make hiking much more difficult than along the ridges.
A series of rises and dips in the trail
gradually takes you higher and higher until you reach the highest point of
the trail at Mile 1.5. From this hill you can look 24 miles to the south and
see the high land
of The Smoky Hills.
This high point
is a pleasant resting place.
The trail continues to bear WSW following a
series of ridges until it comes to the north end of Gardner Lake.
In another logged-off area to the north of the trail young red pines have
been planted to replace those harvested. In addition to forests of pine, oak,
birch and poplar, much of the trail was hacked through an undergrowth of
ferns, grasses, wild rose, hazel bushes and wild raspberry. These low growing
plants are a deterrent to easy walking as they stubbornly re-grow to choke
the trail, and must be cut every year to allow comfortable hiking. The entire
trail is cleared each spring of brush and winter deadfall.
The trail turns southwest at Gardner Lake and follows the shore of the lake
to Mile 3.2. A number of pleasant vistas along the lake make inviting places
to stop for lunch, a stretch-out on the grass, or picture taking. It is along
this lake that the work of beavers begins to be seen. Their paths and mud
slides cross the trail in many places, and you will have to move with care to
avoid stumbling over cut trees, stumps and branches. You have left the airy
ridges where trees are larger and well spaced, and are now into a denser
growth of small plants and more level terrain. Alder and willow also grow at
this lower elevation.
The trail runs generally west to where it
crosses the East Bad Medicine Trail at Mile 4.6 following an ancient logging
railroad bed, long since deserted. Remaining vestiges of the railroad can
still be seen in many places, but the trail of today diverges from the rail
bed several times to bypass swamps which the railway once crossed on
trestles. You will continue to see signs of beaver in an area of swamps and
small lakes and ponds. Be advised to carry insect repellent!
The rails and trestles were removed about
1910 or 1920 when the area was no longer logged. Although the land is fairly
level, there were stretches where a railway cut or fill was needed, and these
are easily recognized. The railroad cross ties were left to rot when the
rails were salvaged. As the wood of each cross tie rotted away, a depression
was left; the careful observer can still see long stretches of crenelations
marking the old rail bed.
The trail curves gradually NW, and finally
west again to Mile 6.2 where it crosses the Anchor-Hill road. The hiking
trail now leaves the rail bed and follows old logging roads WNW through
cut-over land to Mile 7.5. Some of this open area has been replanted with
pine seedlings. The trail reenters the woods and ends at the shore of a small
lake. The Old Headquarters Logging Camp was located on this lake a century
ago, just off the present County Highway 39. The camp area bordered the lake,
and is now a meadow still clear of brush since the time of the loggers, and
provides areas for tenting and camping.
Very little remains to mark the spot where so
much frenzied activity by as many as 500 men characterized one of the camps
that are a heritage of our Northern Minnesota
lumbering industry.
The Old Headquarters Logging Camp area is
designated as a wilderness tenting spot for overnight campers. A spring of
pure water gushes from the earth a few yards north of the lake and within
easy walking distance of the campground. There is ample room for day hikers
to park their cars.
Notes. The Eight mile Bad Medicine Lake Section of the North Country
Hiking Trail encompasses three places of historical interest.
1. The CCC Camp just off Highway 113 on The Anchor-Mattson road.
2. The Old Headquarters Logging Camp
3. The abandoned Frazee-Chisholm Railroad that now serves as a part of the
hiking trail.
The men and women
who worked on this section hope you will enjoy your hike.
Raymond Vlasak, lead person at Bad Medicine and (left)
Darrin Miller, Chapter Treasurer
Links to Itasca
Moraine Chapter Pages
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