This talk will begin with a description of the original old growth forests of northern Minnesota, including the power they held in the landscape and their influence on the indigenous people. These forests attracted rapacious logging and mining at a time of extraordinary expansion in the United States, but that wasn’t the end of the […]
Musician, researcher, and Bemidji-native Brian Miller presents “Logging Era Folksong in Northern Minnesota.” Miller accompanies his singing with guitar and bouzouki (a double-stringed relative of the mandolin). He crafts rich new arrangements of traditional folk songs from the logging era including songs from the Grand Rapids area and others learned from 100-year-old recordings of lumberjack […]
Are bogs really dark, dank, mosquito-infested swamps? Naturalists know better and through Sparky Stensaas’s video and still images, we’ll explore our northern black spruce and tamarack bogs… without getting our feet wet or frozen! It takes tenacity and adaptation to live in this harsh environment. Meet the bird that grows snowshoes, the devious orchid that […]
Join us at the Forest History center for a celebration of winter, featuring outdoor games and activities including horse-drawn sleigh rides, snow snake races, tomahawk throwing, a snowshoe scavenger hunt, and of course the ever popular sliding hill. Trails will be open for skiing, snowshoeing, and biking.
Every place has its history. And the people of a place are shaped by its history. But the history they learn depends on who tells it. The Mississippi River and its tributaries in what is now Itasca County have been inhabited for millennia by people indigenous to the North American continent. Prior to settlement by […]
Learn all about traditional maple syruping, join the all-day jam session, and take a phenology hike! Join us at the Forest History Center to learn how trees are tapped, what maple sap tastes like, and how to boil the sap to turn it into syrup. While the boil is happening, partake of music around the […]
Learn wolf ecology, wolf behavior, why wolves howl, how the wolf pack works as a group, and how the pack uses its territory. Learn how wolves hunt, and how their prey makes their escape. There will also be a discussion about how humans have viewed the wolf throughout history. This program includes a large wolf […]
The Forest History Center will host a Community Science Day in partnership with the Bell Museum of Natural History. Come participate in several hands-on science activities both inside and out with staff from the Bell Museum.
12-1pm, 1:30-2:30pm, 3-4pm, 5-6pm Come and enjoy the season with a horse-drawn ride around the Forest History Center. Spend an hour riding through the woods with friends and family enjoying all that winter has to offer! After the ride enjoy a fire and some cocoa.
Come out and visit the logging camp and enjoy some music, stories, horse-drawn sleigh rides, hot chocolate, bonfires and more.
Come out to experience winter with a horse-drawn ride around the Forest History Center. Spend an hour with friends and family taking in all that winter has to offer! After the ride, warm up with a fire and some cocoa.
For millennia, humans have marveled at the night sky: the wonder of the aurora borealis, the glory of the Milky Way, and the peace that comes with stargazing. In this presentation, Travis Novitsky will share Indigenous peoples’ understanding of, and relationship to the night sky. He will discuss his craft and process as a photographer, […]
Come out to experience winter with a horse-drawn ride around the Forest History Center. Spend an hour with friends and family taking in all that winter has to offer! After the ride, warm up with a fire and some cocoa.
