The Voyageur's Highway: Minnesota's Border Lake Land Paperback – June 1, 1941

American history buffs are often not familiar with how Canada and the USA's borderline was established amid three centuries of fur-trading, (17th, 18th and 19th) that took place around Hudson's Bay, the Great Lakes region and northern Minnesota. Historian author, Grace Lee Nute, is a graceful, accessible writer who spent a lifetime doing the research and writing several books. The famous Canadian Voyageurs are what make her stories so fascinating - those burly French-Canadian canoemen who swung through the northern woods toting their great bundles of furs and trade goods and plunged their fat cargo canoes through endless white water rapids, singing at the top of their lungs! They are to Canadian history what cowboys are to America: national icons.Also amazing are the stories of several of the key explorers like La Verendrye, Alexander MacKenzie and that great exploring map-maker, David Douglas, who, in the late 1700s, travelled 55,000 miles over 27 years, surveying everywhere he went. The end result was his creation of two enormous maps, as exquisitely beautiful today as they were incredibly accurate and influential in their time.Nute also takes the story into the 20th century, up to 1941. the reader is dismayed by early twentieth century environment destruction wreaked by lumber and iron ore mining industries but also heartened by the way Canada and the US have continued to cooperate to preserve much of the original deep forest as well as the pristine lakes that make up the border lakes region. This is indeed a worthy read!

This book reprints one of Grace Lee Nute’s classic works on northern Minnesota. Like her other books, “The Voyageur’s Highway” focuses on the romantic aspects of the fur trade in the North Country, though here brings the story of the region forward into first half of the twentieth century. Her canoe-based explorations often helped establish the presumed locations of sites that the traders and explorers mention in their journals and letters; she knows the country very well.Today's authors don't focus just on the voyageur side of the story, but have much more interest in the Native American communities where they traded, married, and lived. If Nute were writing today, I imagine she would tell stories of some of the Ojibwe women who married fur traders, and discuss the lives of their children together. She might also tell us more about the environmental changes that have followed from the modern logging industry, among others. These aren't criticisms -- like all of us, she is a product of her time -- but they are absences that a 21st-century reader will probably notice.Nute’s books were popular in their day, so it’s not surprising that the Minnesota Historical Society would reprint them. She writes well, though both the language and the concerns will feel a bit dated today. This reminds me of Sigurd Olson, whose writings on wilderness in the North Country also enjoyed great popularity and are regularly reprinted. It’s a short book of 100 pages, with many historical sketches as well as her own photos of the region from the 1930s.

I read this book and enjoyed it so much that I read The Voyageurs soon thereafter. Both are well written and combined, they provide so much interesting information about the history of Canada and the United States. I recommend both as supplimental reading for avid students of history who want more detail than what we were typically taught in school decades ago. My only regret is that I did not have a map of North America at my side when I was reading these books to highlight key places and timelines for later review.

A lot of interesting stories from the exploration and settling of the Great Lakes area and the northwest United States (Southwest Canada). Would have liked more details about the early settlements but I guess you have to draw the line somewhere.

excellent history to be learned from this book, it is amazing that it was busier up there then compared to now

I can't comment personally because I got this as a gift for my father, but he loved it and gives it 5 stars.

Just ok. Nothing special.

I had visited the area earlier this year and was interested to know more history on the area. This book was a great read, I read it cover to cover. It was informative and written beautifully!