The portage, long, crosses a low saddle between North Lake and South Lake. It adjoins the boundary vista, a cleared strip which marks the Canada–United States border between those lakes. South Lake is the source of the Arrow River, tributary to the Pigeon River, which flows east to Lake Superior, other Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. North Lake is in the watershed of the Rainy River, which drains by way of the Winnipeg and Nelson Rivers to Hudson Bay. According to the Canada/US International Boundary Commission, Ontario's boundary with the United States runs 2700 kilometers on water and only about one kilometer on land. The 80-rod Height of Land Portage is a significant part of the land border; the remainder is along two other portages, Watap Portage a short distance to its east, and Swamp Portage to the west in the BWCA and Quetico Provincial Park.
History
The Height of Land Portage may have had its origin as a route for foraging or migrating animals. Historians believe that many portages started as animal tracks, and were later used by the early inhabitants of the area. Prior to the Contact Period, those natives had long used birchbark canoes as the principal means of travel in the thick boreal forest of the Quetico-Superior area. The Height of Land Portage likely was used by those peoples. The search for the Northwest Passage, the fur trade, and missionary activity brought European travelers to the area. Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye used native routes in 1732 to reach Rainy Lake. In the latter part of the eighteenth century it was used by voyageurs of the French-Canadian fur brigades as their main route from Grand Portage on Lake Superior to the pays d'en haut, the "upper country" beyond the height of land separating the Great Lakes from the fur country in the Northwest; see Canadian canoe routes. At one time there was a refitting station on the west end of the portage where canoes were repaired. Voyageurs coming for the first time to the pays d'en haut were initiated after crossing the portage. Each newcomer would be sprinkled with a cedar bough dipped in water, and be made to swear that he would not allow another novice to pass that way without undergoing similar rites and that he would never kiss another voyageur's wife without her consent. Concluding the ceremony with a gunfire salute and drinks of "high wine", the new Homme du nord or Nor'wester and his company would resume their journey.
Following the American Revolution the Treaty of Paris set the international boundary between British North America and the United States along the line of water communication between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods. During the era of exploration there were three principal routes used by canoe brigades to connect these two lakes, all of which crossed the divide separating western Lake Superior from the Hudson Bay watershed:
the Grand Portage route to Rainy Lake, which used the portage described in this article;
to the east, the Kam–Dog–Maligne route used by early French explorerJacques de Noyon in 1688, which headed north from the lake at the site of Fort William, Ontario up the Kaministiquia and Dog Rivers to Cold Water Lake, crossed the divide by Prairie Portage to Height of Land Lake, then went west by way of the Savanne, Pickerel, and Maligne Rivers to Lake La Croix where it joined the Grand Portage route; and
to the west, the St. Louis–Vermilion route, which went from Lake Superior at Fond du Lac near modern Duluth, Minnesota, up the St. Louis and Embarrass Rivers, across the height of land to Pike River and Lake Vermilion, then down the Vermilion River to the Grand Portage route.
Britain asserted that the westernmost St. Louis-Vermilion route was the usual line of water communications, while the United States advocated the easternmost Kam–Dog–Maligne Route. Following surveys in the early nineteenth century, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 fixed the route along the Pigeon River and the Height of Land Portage between North and South Lakes. Since then the portage has been recognized as part of the border. "Free and open to the use of the citizens and subjects of both countries", it continues in its historic use as a footpath for the overland transport of canoes across the divide separating the Great Lakes Basin from the Canadian northwest.
