The Scenic Route

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 you 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.