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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



THK FOKESTEKS CABIN ON DE SOTO LAKE, NBAK WHHH THE BLAZED 



NORWAY PINE STANDS. 



Norway pine. Many large cold permanent springs 

 empty into it, and the lake itself reaches a depth of 

 eighty-five feet. It is a glacial lake like all the other 

 numerous lakes and ponds in the Itasca Forest. It is 

 the second lake in size in the park, being about a 

 mile wide and a mile and a half long. 



From the Roots of a Fallen Tamarack Tree 



Into Elk Lake run several very small streams. One of 

 them is known as Elk Creek. A few years ago a 

 friend and I followed this creek to its ultimate source. 

 After we had traced its winding course for a mile 

 through alder brush, tall grass and weeds which formed 

 just the kind of cover in which the doe likes to hide 

 its fawn, the creek became entirely dry, although the 

 channel remained well marked. In a short time the 

 riddle was solved by our coming to a beaver dam 

 about seven feet high. Above the dam extended a large 

 beaver pond about a quarter of a mile in length. We 

 picked up the stream again above the pond, but a few 

 rods beyond it came to an end under the roots of a 

 fallen tamarack tree. Here was at that time the end 

 of the Mississippi as a distinct current. 



But through a marsh of sphagnum moss and scat- 

 tered tamaracks, water seeped into the beaver pond 

 from another small marshy lake still farther south. 

 And this lake in turn is connected by a ditch dug by 

 beavers a long time ago with Little Elk Lake, quarter 

 of a mile to the southwest. No brooks run into Little 

 Elk Lake, which is therefore the absolute ultimate 

 source of the Mississippi. It is a little farther from 

 the Gulf of Mexico, as the river runs, than any other 

 lake or pond that drains into Lake Itasca. 



Many of the smaller lakes in the park have neither 

 inlet nor outlet and their water level oscillates about 



five feet or more within periods of 

 twenty to twenty-five years. From 

 alx)ut 1880 to 1900, these lakes were 

 very low, and a growth of jack pine 

 sprang up along the sandy beaches of 

 some of them and on sandy ridges 

 separating their bays. 



About 1906 these isolated lakes 

 reached a high water stage and all the 

 jack pines on their beaches and ridges 

 were killed by drowning, because jack 

 pines cannot live with their roots sub- 

 merged. This condition was most 

 marked on De Soto Lake. On a ridge 

 separating the main body of the lake 

 from a small bay I found in 1908 num- 

 erous dead jack pines about twenty-five 

 years old and large enough to be used 

 in the building of a raft. At the time 

 I cut them they were standing in a 

 foot of water. The fact that they had 

 grown there proves that the lake must 

 have been very low for a period of 

 some twenty-five years. These lakes 

 seem to be approaching again a low water level, but 

 they are not yet low enough to permit another growth 

 of Jack pine on their beaches and sandy ridges. 



The Lost Explorers 



De Soto Lake is still given on some maps as the 

 source of the Mississippi. The statement is false. The 

 source of the Mississippi as a river is Lake Itasca, 

 and its farthest ultimate source, if one may use the 

 expression, is Little Elk Lake. De Soto Lake cannot 



YOUNG DEVOTEES OF THE ROD AND LINE BAITING SUN- 

 FISH IN DE SOTO LAKE. 



