Historic Diaries: James Doty, 1820
July 18, 1820: Along the Great River Road
Editor's Note:
The heavily forested region through which Schoolcraft and his party traveled would be harvested in subsequent decades by Minnesota logging companies.
Location: in the vicinity of modern Jacobson, Minn.
View Schoolcraft's complete description in his 1821 Narrative
[Schoolcraft:] There was a shower of rain during the night, -- it ceased at four o'clock. We embarked at five, -- the weather remained cloudy and misty. On ascending one mile, we passed Swan River, which enters, by a mouth of twenty yards wide, on the right shore. Loose rocks appear in the water at its mouth... Thirteen leagues above we passed Rapid No. 7, where the water falls three feet in a hundred and fifty yards. Trout river enters six miles higher, on the right side. It is about thirty feet wide at its mouth, but deep, and widens above. It originates in Trout Lake, and is connected with Swan River, near its source. Prairie River is four miles above, and enters on the same side. It is ninety feet wide at its mouth, -- has a considerable rapid three miles above,but may be ascended with canoes, through an open prairie country, ninety miles. It communicates, by short portages, with one of the western tributaries of St. Louis river, and with Swan river.
We encamped on a sand bank, five hundred yards above its entrance, having progressed fifty-one miles. The current of the Mississippi river, this day, has been strong, and a number of snags and drifts have been encountered. The velocity is computed, by Captain Douglass, at 2 2/3 miles per hour. The timber has been much the same as yesterday, -- elm and maple predominate. In the afternoon we' passed several ridges of pine land elevated twenty or thirty feet above the water, -- and a few miles below Trout river, came through a forest of burnt dead pines, which continue about three miles on either shore... The weather continued cloudy and cool during the day, and very chilly at night. The musquitoes have been less annoying in consequence.
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