Following the Voyageurs Highway: Cultural Resource Management in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

Summary

Wilderness areas are generally managed as unpeopled landscapes, in the words of the Wilderness Act, "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." However, wilderness areas do have human histories, and these historical narratives and the archaeological record they left behind can greatly enrich the visitor experience. In the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota, visitors portage canoes over the same trails and paddle the same routes used by voyageurs and Native Americans centuries before, creating a tangible link with the past. This continuation of historical landscape use for modern recreation creates challenges for cultural resource management by concentrating visitor impacts on areas of high archaeological probability and significance. Of 2080 designated wilderness campsites, approximately 40% are collocated with identified archaeological sites. These sites are at risk of degradation through visitor induced erosion and campsite maintenance activities. Due to the remoteness of the area, only a small number (approximately 13%) have been surveyed to current standards. However this remoteness and the designation as a wilderness area has also served to help preserve the archaeological resources of the Boundary Waters region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22536