Minnesota's Best Lookouts

The bluffs and backwaters of the Mississippi, seen from the vantage of O.L. Kipp State Park, are among the many panoramas visible from high points around the state.

By Greg Breining

If you were to climb to the top of Eagle Mountain, just a short hike from Superior National Forest Road 153, you could look across 13 miles of green forest to the infinite blue of Lake Superior. That short distance takes in Minnesota's entire topographic range. Eagle Mountain, at 2,301 feet above sea level, is the state's highest point; Lake Superior, at about 602 feet, its lowest. That's all--1,699 feet from top to bottom, carried across 300 miles east to west and 400 miles north to south. Compared with many states, Minnesota lies as flat as a butterfly pressed under glass.

So Minnesota might be the last place you'd look for stunning overlooks. Yet within its limited range of highs and lows, sections of the state are rugged and have lofty peaks. Minnesota's state parks, a number of which became parks for the very ruggedness and raw drama of the landscape, include many nifty lookouts.

While Eagle Mountain is the highest of Minnesota's overlooks, it is by no means the most spectacular. That distinction, in my opinion, belongs to the following four sites. Take a look for yourself and let the dramatic views fire your imagination and launch further exploration.

O.L. Kipp State Park

Downstream from Winona, not far from where the Mississippi leaves Minnesota, the bluffs of O.L. Kipp State Park rise 500 feet above the river. To reach the park entrance, turn west off U.S. 61 to Interstate 90 and take Minnesota 3 north. Once inside the nearly 3,000-acre park, take any of several hiking trails to the bluff tops.

The trail to King's Bluff winds through oak woods, offering intermittent views across prairies and the ravines of small creeks that cut toward the Mississippi. At the top the view suddenly opens to the Father of Waters itself, a mighty scene of the broad Mississippi, the delta of the Black River, and a tangle of channels and backwaters. Upstream and down stretches the long valley, with folded hills like rumpled blankets protecting the river. The scene is not so different from what Father Louis Hennepin saw in 1680, when he observed that the Mississippi "runs between the two chains of mountains . . . that wind with the river." For early settlers ascending the Mississippi by riverboat, this majestic bluff country provided their first glimpse of their new Minnesota home.

The top of King's Bluff provides a stunning perspective not only of the river environs, but also of the terrain within the park. You can look down into the oak-filled valleys as if flying above them in an airplane. White-tailed deer are easy to spot as they scamper across the impossibly steep goat prairie near the precipice of Queen's Bluff, across the valley.

In addition to hiking trails, the park has picnic sites and 31 campsites.

Split Rock Lighthouse

Several spots along the North Shore provide sweeping views of Lake Superior and the craggy shore, among them Palisade Head, Carlton Peak, and Oberg and Leveaux mountains. My vote for best panorama goes to Split Rock Lighthouse. This classic lighthouse, perched on a cliff of anorthosite far above Lake Superior, must be the most photographed landmark on the North Shore, and perhaps in all of Minnesota.

The lighthouse was built after autumn storms in 1905 wrecked six ships and killed six sailors along the North Shore. Metallic deposits in the area deflected compass needles, making navigation along shore treacherous.

Tours of the historic site today take visitors to the lighthouse tower (decommissioned in 1969), where the lens that focused the beam of light over the lake floats on a bearing of 250 pounds of liquid mercury. Visitors can also see the fog-signal building, residences for three lighthouse keepers and their families, and a history center with an excellent film on the lighthouse and exhibits on shipping, shipwrecks, and commercial fishing.

The Minnesota Historical Society operates the lighthouse as Split Rock Lighthouse Historic Site. The surrounding Split Rock Lighthouse State Park comprises nearly 1,900 acres, with hiking and cross-country ski trails. The Superior Hiking Trail cuts through the park.

Inspiration Peak

At various times during the most recent ice age, glaciers covered the face of Minnesota. A glacier is an awesome machine--part bulldozer, part conveyor belt, part sluice--rearranging the landscape on a continental scale. Glacial meltwater, subglacial streams, ice that advanced as its margins retreated--all these forces combined to form hills and swales, ridges, cone-shaped kames, worm-shaped eskers, and fields of parallel drumlins.

The most obvious blessing of the glaciers is the abundance of lakes that formed in this irregular topography. In Minnesota one of the greatest concentrations of glacial hills and lakes lies in a belt from Glenwood north to Detroit Lakes. Like galaxies of stars, clusters of lakes fill the firmament of the landscape.

In this region, just north of Alexandria, is a collection of glacial features known as the Leaf Hills. The highest among them is Inspiration Peak, just west of Urbank. It rises 1,750 feet, about 400 feet above the surrounding countryside.

The vista was well-known to Sinclair Lewis. From the prairie-covered crest of the hill, he wrote, "there's to be seen a glorious 20-mile circle of some 50 lakes scattered among fields and pastures, like sequins fallen on an old paisley shawl." Lewis chided Minnesotans for not knowing the "haunts of beauty" in their own back yards. And generally speaking, the overlook might as well be a secret, it is known by so few people outside the immediate area.

The quarter-mile hike to the top is rather easy. The view is particularly impressive in autumn when the hardwoods are ablaze.

Inspiration Peak is a state wayside and is managed by Lake Carlos State Park, situated 15 miles to the southeast, on the shore of the park's namesake. Lakes in the area, including Carlos, are kettle lakes, formed when glacial deposits buried chunks of ice the size of icebergs. As the blocks melted, the land collapsed, forming a basin that filled with water. Lake Carlos itself is clear and deep. It provides good fishing for walleyes, northern pike, largemouth bass, and crappies. Other activities in this 1,300-acre park include camping, hiking, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling.

Blue Mounds State Park

As you drive west along I-90, past Fairmont, past Jackson, past Worthington and Luverne, the land continues to rise, as though on a table tilted toward the height of the Rockies, far to the west. This persistent slant upward in the landscape, which takes in the southwestern corner of Minnesota and part of South Dakota, is called the Coteau des Prairies. It is underlain by a bedrock core.

The nearly 2,000-acre Blue Mounds State Park, north of Luverne on U.S. 75, offers a dramatic view of this bedrock. There a ridge of Sioux quartzite a mile and a half long sprouts from the prairie, as lurid as a bruise. The bedrock is a remnant of a late Precambrian sea, where waves lapped and rippled the sand perhaps a billion years ago. Today, however, little water is to be seen from the crest of the cliff--just a fetch of farmland and wooded windbreaks, which, on a clear day, reaches deep into Iowa and west into South Dakota. Step back from the ridge to indulge your sense of history: The prairie grasses close around to create the impression that a robe of rippling grass stretches horizon to horizon. The illusion is furthered by a herd of about 40 bison grazing in a 240-acre pasture. They, like the patch of prairie itself, are a shadow of a world that once was, a remnant in a threadbare quilt of land that once held the full fabric of tallgrass prairie. Blue Mounds has hiking trails, camping, and two small artificial lakes.

For more information, contact the DNR Information Center. E-mail: info.dnr@state.mn.us. Phone: 651-296-6157. Toll-free in Minnesota: 1-800-766-6000. Telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD): 651-296-5484. TDD toll-free in state: 800-657-3929.

Greg Breining is Managing Editor of The Minnesota Volunteer. This article is adapted from his book Minnesota, to be published in May by Compass American Guides, 1-800-733-3000.