St. Croix River

About

Long before any European name attached to it, the St. Croix served as a contested boundary between the Dakota (Sioux) and Ojibwe nations for centuries. Both peoples relied on the river's wild rice beds, sturgeon runs, and fur-bearing animals. The name 'St. Croix' itself came later, given by French voyageurs in the 1600s after they found a cross-shaped marker at the river's mouth.

By the 1680s the river had become a primary artery for French fur traders, among them Father Louis Hennepin, who pressed inland to explore the falls of St. Anthony in 1680. Trade routes hardened into settlement over the following century and a half. On April 23, 1851, the first four Swedish families stepped ashore at Taylors Falls, planting the earliest Swedish community in Chisago County and seeding a Scandinavian heritage that still marks the valley today.

The river's real wealth, though, was white pine. Between 1840 and 1914, over 15 billion board feet were driven down the St. Croix, and Stillwater, at the river's southern end, became Minnesota's original lumber capital. The timber that floated past its mills fueled the growth of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The industry's defining moment came in 1886, when a log jam so vast it drew worldwide attention choked the river — a spectacle that, more than anything else, galvanized early efforts to preserve the region.

That preservationist impulse came to fruition in 1968. The St. Croix was among the first eight rivers in the nation designated under the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, permanently protecting the upper river corridor from damming and development. The designation covers 252 miles of the Namekagon and St. Croix and established the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, managed by the National Park Service. The river's hydrology had already been studied for generations — from the 1870s–1890s USGS surveys and the 1880s–1910s gauging stations through the streamflow assessments and, later, the Clean Water Act work that addressed a century of logging and industrial impacts.

For paddlers, the river reads in distinct chapters. The Upper St. Croix runs 100 miles from Solon Springs to Taylors Falls through a wilderness corridor. At Taylors Falls the current narrows into the Dalles of the St. Croix, a gorge rated Class I–II. Below that, the Lower St. Croix stretches 52 miles from Taylors Falls to Prescott — wide, scenic, and gentle — while the Namekagon confluence offers remote canoe-camping. Outfitters such as Wild River Outfitters on the upper river and Taylors Falls Canoe Rental, which runs day trips through the Dalles and lower river, serve the corridor. With an average flow near 4,800 CFS and an optimal window of 2,000 to 8,000 CFS, the St. Croix carries the same water that once floated a logging empire, now protected for generations to come.