Grand Portage National Monument

I've driven past here every year and regret not having checked it out sooner! The staff were all very friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable! The exhibits were super interesting and there is a great introduction video in the amphitheater. Definitely take the extra time to walk through the historical area and explore the buildings, if you have any questions, they'll happily explain!

Excellent display, beautiful and informative. All the staff were friendly and knowledgeable. We went through the Heritage Center first and then walked out to the outdoor displays. There, costumed guides in the canoe repair shop, the big kitchen and dining hall did an excellent job of explaining life at Grand Portage back in the day and answering questions. Plan for an hour or two if you enjoy history - there is a lot to take in.

So this place was very interesting. Walking around this area you will run into guides at various stages of this trip who tell you about how the area used to operate and the types of people that used to call it home. This place was highly fascinating to me and how voyagers used to make their Spanish dollars. I also found it interesting with how busy the area was and how many people visited this area. It was easy to find parking here and it was free to tour this area. They had a gift shop and exhibits in a hard building at the beginning. Walking down the path you can tour the fort and take a nice walk on a large dock. I was very glad I took the family here and you will be too. Ultimately it was worth it and I would definitely come back in the future.

This is in the Heritage Center and is a great stop. We watched the video which was very informative. There is a small gift shop as well as a small museum area. Down the hill a short walk is a great area with the buildings etc from the fur trading time. Definitely worth the stop.

Very informative, well kept, beautiful visitors center, and it’s FREE. Reinactors were a mixed bag. The lady from Texas was friendly and really knew her history! The others were a mixed bag. In their defense, it was 30 minutes before closing. Definitely go here. You will learn a lot, especially when paired with a trip to Fort William on the Canadian side.

Fantastic visitors center. Beautiful building, with many wonderful displays. Lots to learn about Voyageurs and the local Ojibwa tribes in the area. The history of the far Great Lakes and the fur trade are explained in videos, plaques and a movie. There's a big amazing moose on the upper level of the vc which is really neat to see up close. You can also travel the thousands year old Grand Portage right outside. Or, take a trip to the already in view Isle Royale. The scenery up here by Superior is incomparable in North America.

Grand Portage National Monument is a great place to visit and has a lot of history. I found the way they lived in the past fascinating. The site has a lot of info about Grand Portage in the past, including historical replicas of how the native Americans lived. If you do Isle Royale by boat, you should have enough time to visit here afterward. Definitely worth a visit.

Fun stop! Lots to see! They have the old trading fort at the bottom and up the hill is a visitor center with lots of interactive and educational opportunities. My favorite was the canoe making area, as the workers had so much information to share and were very passionate.

This is a great national monument that teaches about the history of fur trade and native American (Ojibwe) relation in the area. The visitor center is two stories and according to the rangers there, has the highest rated park film of any in the parks. There's also a fort about a hundred yards outside the visitor center which has events and other info. It's all free to visit.

A charming natural area with a faithful recreation of the early North West Company trading post. We enjoyed a eyngaging presentation from an enthusiastic guide, in which he demonstrated how the early fur traders made fire. Our kids were enthralled (ok, I was too!).

Superb family/oriented site with highly skilled ranger staff. Every August, the grounds are filled with interpreters demonstrating voyageurs from Montreal, as well from as far north as the "far-flung Athabasca" which is located in the extreme NW Canadas. This educational opportunity is not to be missed by families touring northern Minnesota

Beautiful NPS building with a fantastic film. Great interpretive guides at the traders building. Beautiful grounds and descriptive displays. Very well done.

Great visit if you're staying along the north shore of Lake Superior. I stopped here in the fall after most of the outdoor activities had wrapped up for the season, but it was still a good visit. Definitely start with the visitors center if you're like me and didn't know anything about the monument. I'm normally not a huge fan of the national park intro videos- and while this one was on the longer side, it was very well produced and I didn't think twice about watching all of the way though. The rest of the visitors center has a good number of exhibits to check out- including some on the second floor which I didn't have a chance to check out. After you leave the visitors center, consider taking the short hike up to the overlook. It's only a 10-15 minute walk and offers great views!

If you're interested in history, this is a can't miss stop while visiting the North Shore. The Great Hall etc. was closed for the winter but the Grand Portage National Monument Heritage Center was still worth the trip. The Center has exhibits covering the fur trade, local history and archeology, and Ojibwe culture. Definitely planning to return on our next summer visit.

They have done in incredible job recreating the fort. They have volunteers in period costumes who gladly share their knowledge and the history of the place. Great signage all around to help paint the picture of life back then. Excellent visit!!!

We have rarely met a park ranger that doesn't exude enthusiastic professionalism but Mary at Grand Portage State Monument really stands out! We visited last week on a whistle-stop two-day trip to the North Shore after a conference in Minneapolis. It was a quiet day at a quiet time of year, mid-week in late September, and we ended up being the only two on the 11am tour (although a few others joined us later, drawn in by Mary's energy.) The entire tour was interesting but the highlight for us was the visit to the workshop where Mary explained how the vintage tools worked and demonstrated many of them, drawing on her personal experience of having used them to craft a number of vintage objects. There have been times in the past where we've been on tours and it's clear that the guide can adequately answer the obvious questions but has little depth of knowledge. But clearly Mary really knows her stuff - which was particularly fascinating as my husband has a deep interest in both woodworking and boats, and in traditional techniques, and what he hasn't built personally, he's read about building, so he was in hog heaven! Thank you to all at Grand Portage State Monument for the great visit. Indeed, thank you to every employee and volunteer of the Park Services, whether national, state or local. You are the best of people!

Every year we go up North we try and discover something new. None of us had ever been to Grand Portage and we had no idea what to expect. This was worth the drive from Lutsen or Grand Marais! The previous reviewer said it all perfectly. The staff in the visitor center were happy and helpful. We enjoyed the exhibits and the fort replica across the street. There was a one mile hike behind the visitor center I was dying to go on, but it started raining. I hear the view from the top of Mount Rose is great. Five miles down the road is Grand Portage State Park where there is an amazing waterfall that is a short hike from the parking lot. Make sure you stop here too. It is literally a stones throw from the Canadian border. You can see the checkpoint from the highway before you turn into the park.

We stopped here before Grand Postage State Park. The outside fur post was closed for the season. Sad face. My husband and son watched 23 minute movie. I walked around outside and saw some teepees. The ladies at desk were nice and told me about Ryden's Gift Shop by the border. Next time stop here before October.

Drove up from Lutsen area while in the state visiting and wanted to check this National Monument out. Nice quick stop with lots of history and learning. The visitor center was nice with good displays and helpful Rangers to advise what to do. Fur trade. Etc.

We were traveling near-by and saw the sign and had to investigate. This is a cool place and wish we could have been here when the special celebration was going on in the spring. We have this on the list to return.

Just about six miles from the Canadian border and Grand Portage State Park is Grand Portage National Monument. No fees are required. Highly recommend that you start your experience with the 15-minute movie in the Visitors Center that is very good at explaining the history of the area and the fur trade run by the Northwest Company. We also visited the Fort William Historical Park in Thunder Bay, Canada. We found the movie and interpreters in Grand Portage more informative. We got more of the history in Grand Portage than we did in Fort William (where a fee is charged). The fur trade by the Northwest Company started in Grand Portage and later moved to Thunder Bay when the international border lines came into existence.

This is a must see place to visit. We had visited Voyageur NP and Isle Royale and decided to check this one off too. We ended up spending the entire day, loving every minute. They had ongoing demonstrations and talks by period dressed rangers and volunteers. All extremely knowledgeable and passionate about their specialty. Highlight for me was a fiddle concert. No entrance fee was a bonus. Hidden treasure of the area.

We were exploring various places on the North Shore. We stopped here, and it was by far my fav place on the entire trip. First of all, it's in an undeniably beautiful place at the northernmost parts of Minnesota. It's nestled in a scenic harbor that has tons of significance for both Canadian and Great Lakes history. Secondly, it's free to visit and explore. Finally, it has a lot to offer. You can wander alone and check out all the detailed reconstructions of a North West Company post Great Hall, warehouse, kitchen, grounds, and Ojibwe village, or there are tours. These locations that you can visit while on site have historical interpreters dressed in period costume and who were all very helpful and engaging, especially the young man working in the kitchen, who showed us the types of foods Voyageurs and company gentlemen would have consumed. But, you can see how their canoes were made, and also find out a lot about the trading side of Voyageur history. In addition to the reconstructions of the post being so incredibly awesome, the exhibits in the visitor center exceeded my expectations for similar locations. They were interactive, informative, and attractive to a variety of learners. There is a great little gift shop with recreated earthenware and other objects that had been modeled after artifacts found on site during the excavations in addition to books and other fun souvenirs. Maybe I'm just a nerd for history, but this place does a lot of justice to an important chapter of early North American history and was really fun, to boot!! A must-see!!

This place has an amazing history and really brings history alive. Guided tour was especially worthwhile. Our tour guide was knowledgeable about history, and excited about being involved. He shared interesting information about the people and events, as well as the cooking, crafts, crops, and business practices of the period. He highlighted how the local history fit into the world economy. The rest of the staff were also helpful and informative. Well worth the drive, and we look forward to going back to spend more time.

A wonderful hidden gem. It blends the material culture and history of the Ojibwe (the site is jointly managed by the local Ojibwe authority and the National Park Service), the Voyageurs (Euro-Northamerican laboring men who traded and transported goods by canoe), and the trading company and its investors. Or to put it another way: you see accurate re-creations of a traditional Ojibwe village, a campsite, and a significant central trading post with many buildings. All include appropriate artifacts, including a very interesting collection of handmade birchbark canoes. And on top of that, you can hike the portage trail itself, the same one the Native people and the Voyageurs used - eight miles between this post and the next stop, bypassing the rapids in the river. There is also an easy one-mile trail with a view, and it's all right next to Lake Superior. The interpreters were engaged in a lot of activities and were very knowledgeable, and the signage was well prepared and interesting. Well worth a visit.