Cloquet River

About

Cloquet Fire — Minnesota's Deadliest Wildfire. The river's story begins in the boreal forest waterways of the Ojibwe (Anishinaabe), whose territory encompassed the Cloquet watershed long before contact. For the Ojibwe, the river provided wild rice and fish and served as a travel corridor between Lake Superior and the interior — part of the vast canoe network the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and their ancestors navigated across the North Woods.

By the late nineteenth century the corridor had become logging country. The Cloquet River was heavily logged during Minnesota's pine era, roughly from the 1880s into the 1920s, and the cutover ground it left behind proved dangerously flammable. On October 12, 1918, a spark from a passing train ignited the parched forest, and 76 mph winds drove the flames through Cloquet, Moose Lake, and Kettle River. The Cloquet Fire killed 453 people and leveled the town of Cloquet; across the broader disaster, about 1,000 people died, 38 communities were destroyed, and 250,000 acres burned in a single day. The NWS rated the property damage at $73 million. It remains the worst natural disaster in Minnesota history. The timber industry rebuilt Cloquet within a year, and the town still hosts a major paper mill — the Sappi mill, successor to the original 1898 Northwest Paper Company plant — on the St. Louis River, into which the Cloquet flows.

The river's hydrology was first documented during the same industrial era. Early USGS surveys of the 1870s through the 1890s, followed by gauging-station work into the early twentieth century and state geological streamflow assessments, produced the first comprehensive picture of the Cloquet's flow. Later state water pollution control studies and Clean Water Act assessments addressed more than a century of logging, agricultural, and industrial impacts, and modern restoration and TMDL programs continue that work. Since 2010, regional DNR efforts in partnership with local watershed groups have carried out streambank stabilization, native fish restocking, nutrient reduction, and water-quality improvements.

Upstream, the character is wilder. Above Island Lake the watershed stays heavily forested and sparsely settled, one of the rare lake-dominated corners of the Lake Superior Basin. Downstream the river grows partly forested, brushing farmland and homes, and its many steep, rocky runs turn impassable when water drops low. USGS gauge 04023000 anchors the flow picture, averaging about 820 CFS with a historic median near 738 CFS; paddlers generally find the river runnable in the 300–2000 CFS range, over Class I–II water.

For canoeists, the river divides into three natural stretches. The 30 miles from Island Lake to Indian Lake run through upper wilderness and require portages. The 35 miles from Indian Lake to Alden Lake, rated Class I–II, are widely regarded as the best paddling on the river. The final 35 miles from Alden Lake to Cloquet widen as the current approaches town. Riverside campsites strung along the corridor make multi-day trips practical, and outfitters such as Cloquet Valley Outfitters run shuttle and trip-outfitting service for those tracing the full route.