Cascade River State Park: Minnesota North Shore Waterfalls | Real-Time Hike + History

Hike the Cascade River as it tumbles down to Lake Superior on Minnesota North Shore, in real time, with the history and geology of this wild little gorge along the way. In this video we follow the Superior Hiking Trail past a staircase of waterfalls, through billion year old lava rock, boreal forest, and tea dark rapids, all the way down to the great inland sea. THE HIKE Cascade River State Park, Cook County, Minnesota (North Shore of Lake Superior) Filmed in early October, peak autumn color CHAPTERS 0:00 Welcome 0:38 Where are we 1:14 The cascades 1:50 The great drop 2:24 The tea colored water 3:01 Billion year rock 3:40 The gorge 4:15 The ice 4:51 Lake Superior 5:27 The boreal forest 6:03 Autumn fire 6:39 The Superior Hiking Trail 7:15 Anishinaabe homeland 7:49 The voyageurs 8:26 The treaty 9:02 Highway 61 9:38 The CCC 10:15 A state park 10:52 Wild neighbors 11:27 The sound 12:02 The cedars 12:39 The rivers journey 13:15 The pools 13:52 Where river meets lake 14:28 Free and public 15:02 The light 15:37 The essence 16:13 Closing ABOUT THIS PLACE The Cascade River drops roughly 900 feet over its final three miles, ending in a chain of cascades that pour through a narrow gorge just before reaching Lake Superior. The dark rock is basalt, lava that erupted about 1.1 billion years ago when the Midcontinent Rift tried to tear the continent apart. The water runs tea brown, stained by tannins from the cedar and spruce bogs upstream. This is Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) homeland, and the North Shore was ceded in the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe. In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps built trails and stonework here, and Cascade River became a Minnesota state park in 1957. Today the Superior Hiking Trail threads the gorge, and Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake on Earth by surface area, waits at the bottom. Music: "Earth Prelude" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0. Explore the world with @fruworldexplorer. Subscribe for real time hikes and rides with history.