The Scenic Route

"Rich and informative, The Scenic Route tells a compelling story of the North Shore highway we experience today. Including thoughtful interactions with people who understand the area’s unique history, Arnold R. Alanen inspires a truly meaningful sense of place with his practiced eye and passion for deeper understanding. Like the remarkably beautiful North Shore natural and cultural landscape, this book merits revisiting and rediscovery time and again."—Steve C. Martens, architectural historian

"Arnold R. Alanen's The Scenic Route solves many mysteries and documents our human imprint on the North Shore in detail. From the early mailruns of John Beargrease to Mineral Center and the Outlaw Bridge, this book connects the people and places along the route to our shared, often complicated history."—Staci Lola Drouillard, author of Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe

"A superb exploration of the cultural history and built environment of the North Shore. Arnold R. Alanen shares how the Highway 61 corridor took shape as well as the stories of the many people who left an imprint with their houses, resorts, businesses, fisheries, churches, and beyond. And he thoroughly documents the succession of structures that once stood along this corridor. The Scenic Route is wonderfully illustrated, but the best part is that Alanen really likes his subject. His concern and appreciation for the cultural landscape of the North Shore shines throughout."—Timothy Cochrane, author of Making the Carry and Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais

A guide to the built environment and history of one of the Midwest’s most popular roads

Journey along Minnesota’s North Shore, the spectacular Lake Superior coastline between Duluth and the Canadian border, and travel through natural and cultural splendor. The North Shore Scenic Drive, the stretch of Minnesota Highway 61 that leads through tunnels and remarkable vistas, crosses rivers and streams and rocky divides as it makes its way through fishing villages, logging sites, tourist enclaves, Grand Portage National Monument, Superior National Forest, and numerous state parks that have made the North Shore a beloved destination for generations. This is the North Shore explored in The Scenic Route, a field guide to the cultural landscape that comprises one of the Midwest’s most famous byways and a journey deep into its evolution from ancient wilderness to All-American Road. 

The highway corridor and lakeshore offer evidence of human activities that began after the retreat of glacial ice, when the Anishinaabe people plied the waters of Lake Superior. Euro-American explorers and traders followed, and soon the footpaths established by the region’s first inhabitants were used by dogsleds, horse-drawn sleighs, and coaches—and then, in 1917, the rugged trails became the early motor road that would eventually be Minnesota Highway 61. 

Arnold R. Alanen follows these denizens and visitors, exploring the material world they built along the way: cabins and resorts, docks and fish houses, farms and logging operations, as well as churches, cemeteries, streetscapes, bridges, schools, lighthouses, parks, waysides, and roadside attractions. Interwoven with his tour of the built environment are stories of the people who shaped the cultural heritage along Minnesota’s North Shore.

Arnold R. Alanen, born, raised, and educated in Minnesota, is professor emeritus of planning and landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is author of Morgan Park: Duluth, U.S. Steel, and the Forging of a Company Town (Minnesota, 2007) and Finns in Minnesota; coauthor of Main Street Ready-Made: The New Deal Community of Greendale, Wisconsin; and coeditor of Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America.

Contents

Preface

Introduction: From Footpaths and Mail Trails to a Scenic Byway

Part I. A History of Minnesota’s North Shore Highway

1. Dogs, Horses, and Mail along the North Shore Trail

2. A Road and a Bridge to Canada, 1900–1917

3. A State, Federal, and International Highway, 1918–1929

4. The North Shore during Depression and War, 1930–1945

5. On the Road Again, and Again, 1946–2024

Part II. A Guide to Highway 61

St. Louis County

Lake County

Cook County

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index