Bois Brule River

About

Brule River, Wisconsin — 1890s Logging Era, 1924 Brule River State Forest, 43.9-mi Douglas County 1840s. Paddlers reading the Bois Brule start with the numbers at gauge 04025500: an average near 160 CFS, a historic flow of 144, and an optimal window of 100 to 500. The river rates Class I–III across its 44 miles, and it reads differently from top to bottom. The Upper Brule at Stones Bridge is Class I water holding wild brook and brown trout. The Middle Brule, from Big Lake to Winneboujou, is Class I–II fly-fishing water. The Lower Brule, from Copper Range to Lake Superior, stiffens to Class II–III and carries the steelhead run.

That character sits on top of a long human story. The watershed was Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) territory, and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa maintains ancestral ties to it. The Brule was a key travel corridor: a short portage joined Lake Superior to the St. Croix River and, beyond it, the upper Mississippi. The Brule to St. Croix Portage Trail, traveled for centuries, endures today as part of the National Register of Historic Landmarks. The 1840s–1880s brought the French fur trade era to the same corridor.

Then came the timber. The watershed was logged from the 1830s through the 1920s, feeding a regional industry that peaked between roughly 1850 and 1910 and the railroad expansion of the 1860s–1910s. Local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations were the major operators. Cutting of the surrounding pine forests began in earnest in the 1890s, and the logging dams and relentless log drives that followed inflicted severe damage on the river and its banks. The old-growth stands were exhausted by 1910; state forestry conservation began in 1915, and the establishment of state forests in the 1930s ended large-scale logging.

The modern era took shape in 1924 with the establishment of the Brule River State Forest. Four years later, Coolidge made Cedar Island Lodge his summer White House, cementing the 'River of Presidents' reputation. Over the following century the land was knit back into public trust. In 2007, the Brule River State Forest gained a significant addition of nearly 6,000 acres, bringing the property to almost 47,000 acres and securing much of the corridor against future loss. The 1990s saw the Brule River Watershed Restoration Project, and the 2010s brought the Brule River State Forest Management Plan, the Corridor Management Plan, and a Sediment Remediation Project addressing the legacy of historic logging.

What remains is one of the region's finest coldwater fisheries. The Brule carries designations to match: Brule River State Forest, a Wisconsin Class A Wild Trout Stream, and a Lake Superior Steelhead Fishery. It is a tributary of Lake Superior, and its watershed is a key part of the larger Lake Superior watershed. The river supports the Brule, Lake Nebagamon, and Port Wing economies, and the towns still lean on the anglers who come chasing steelhead, brown trout, coho, and Chinook. From portage route to working timber river to protected sporting stream, the Bois Brule carries its layered history toward Lake Superior.