ASH RIVER- Barely five minutes after leaving the dock at the Ash River Visitor Center, the cabin of the Voyageurs National Park tour boat Ne-Zho-Dain emptied.
An eagle had been spotted.
Passengers lined the rails with park-provided binoculars, or their own cameras and cell phones, as the boat slowed for the first wildlife stop of Friday’s 5½-hour tour to Kettle Falls, the park’s most popular tourist destination. The park makes no promises about what passengers might see, but this trip encountered around a half-dozen eagles and a large flock of ducks gathered on the water.
Ranger Kevin piloted the boat while Ranger Max served as interpretive guide, introducing passengers to the natural and cultural history of the park during stops known as “hover points.” Passengers were free to move between the cabin, outside deck, and bow while the boat was underway.
The two-hour outbound trip offered glimpses into the different industries and ways of life once found along the park’s waterways.
At Tar Point, commercial fishermen once treated their nets with tar to preserve and strengthen them. Junction Falls, a group of three waterfalls, gave Max an opportunity to explain how the park is working to keep aquatic invasive species found in its large lakes from reaching the smaller interior lakes.
Near Mica Island, he passed around pieces of the flaky mineral while passengers scanned the wooded hillside for a glimpse of the opening to a short-lived mine.
One of the longer stops came at Stevens Island, where Ingvald Walter “I.W.” Stevens purchased a former lumber company retreat in 1932 and opened Pine Cove Resort five years later.
Stevens closed the resort in 1959 but continued living alone on the island, gardening, hunting, cutting wood, and harvesting ice. He remained there until age 94 and lived another decade after leaving.
Several former resort buildings remain visible from the water, allowing passengers to connect Stevens’ story with the place where he lived it.
The Ne-Zho-Dain reached Kettle Falls shortly before noon. Passengers could walk uphill to the hotel with Max or opt for a golf cart ride, then had nearly two hours for lunch and independent exploration.
Some ate in the hotel dining room, while others took preordered boxed lunches onto its screened front porch or to picnic tables on the lawn.
Built by timber cruiser Ed Rose, the hotel has served lumberjacks, miners, commercial fishermen, and tourists since the early 1900s. Rose sold it to Robert “Bob” Williams in 1918 for $1,000 and four barrels of whiskey. During Prohibition, the remote hotel became associated with rum-running, illegal stills, and other activities less likely to appear in a modern tourism brochure.
Its famously sloping barroom floor remains one of the hotel’s most photographed features. Visitors posed while leaning into the slope beside a pool table resting on a sharply angled base built to keep its playing surface level.
Passengers later reassembled for the walk to an observation deck overlooking the Kettle Falls dam before returning to the boat for a precise 2 p.m. departure.
The return trip featured a different set of stops and introduced more people who had made their lives along the lakes.
They included Finnish immigrants Lydia and Emil Torry, who homesteaded and operated a commercial fishing camp on Kubel Island. After Emil died in a boating accident, Lydia continued living on the island alone for roughly another quarter-century.
At Hoist Bay, wooden pilings rising from the water mark the former railroad trestle used by the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company. Between 1913 and 1929, machinery hoisted an estimated 13.5 million board feet of floating timber onto railcars bound for the company’s massive sawmill in Virginia.
Ted and Fern Monson later transformed the abandoned logging site into a summer resort. Several of their white cabins remain visible from the water, along with an icehouse, boathouse, and other resort-era structures.
By the time the Ne-Zho-Dain returned to Ash River, quiet shorelines and wooded islands had become places once populated by fishermen, miners, loggers, homesteaders, and resort owners. Along the way, passengers still had plenty of time to simply enjoy the ride.
Information and reservations for Voyageurs National Park boat tours are available at Recreation.gov.