Savanna Portage State Park

The park is located on the divide between the watersheds of the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, both of which drain to the Atlantic Ocean. The area is a low-relief plain which was once a glacial lakebed. During the last phase of the Wisconsinan glaciation, the deteriorating continental glacier left behind connected lakes, known as Glacial Lakes Aitkin and Upham. Formed by the retreat of the Saint Louis Sublobe of the Superior Lobe of the glacier, Lake Upham drained through Lake Aitkin to the Mississippi River through Big Sandy Lake. The retreating glacier and the lakes deposited sand and sediments in the lakebed. As the lakes drained these sediments became the present plain. The plain at first was drained by the Cloquet River, which then ran west to the Mississippi River. By the process of stream piracy, the smaller Saint Louis River, which runs to Lake Superior, captured the Cloquet River and most of its drainage basin. This left behind the East Savanna River which drains into the Saint Louis River, Lake Superior, the lower Great Lakes, and the Saint Lawrence River, and to the west, the West Savanna River, which is tributary to the Mississippi River via the Prairie River and Big Sandy Lake. These wet lowlands adjoin rolling hills which are end moraines of the recent glaciation. The moraines are part of the Saint Louis Moraines Subdivision of the Northern Minnesota Drift Plain. ==Savanna Portage==

The plain in the old lakebed provided a low and very swampy overland route across the divide between the East and West Savanna Rivers. Wolf Lake, source of the East Savanna River, is only about east of Savanna Lake on the West Savanna. As the areas adjoining Wolf Lake and the upper East Savanna River are quite wet, the route selected for the portage trail departed from the river further downstream, shortening the distance to be traveled through the bog. The portage, some long, starts in the swamp and then goes west in a wooded upland to reach the West Savanna River. Long used by Native Americans, it became a thoroughfare between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley for explorers, missionaries, and fur traders. Travelers from the east exited Lake Superior near Fond du Lac ("end of the lake", or more idiomatically "head of the lake", where Duluth is now located), and ascended the steep, rocky, and difficult gorge of the lower Saint Louis River, which falls some from the location of Carlton, Minnesota, through what is now Jay Cooke State Park to its outlet at the lake. The portage likely was used by Europeans as early as 1679, when Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut visited a Sioux village at Big Sandy Lake during his exploration of the Lake Superior region and the Upper Mississippi River. Among the portage's users were fur traders who operated in the upper Mississippi River valley. Some went no further than the American Fur Company's large regional trading post on Big Sandy Lake operated by William Aitkin in the 1820s and 1830s, the years of peak usage of the route. ==State park==

The interest created by investigations into the trail's route inspired creation of Savanna Portage State Park in 1961. of hills, lakes, and bogs now comprise the park. Activities include summer and winter camping, hiking, snowshoeing, and ski touring on the old portage and other trails, mountain biking, and snowmobiling, as well as swimming, fishing, canoeing, and boating on Loon Lake. ==Flora and fauna==

Named for its open marshy grassland, the park's peat bogs and marshes include sedges and black spruce, tamarack, and white cedar. ==See also==