CRANE LAKE- With contractors in place, the long-held dream of a Voyageurs National Park visitor center and campground for Crane Lake is well down the path toward becoming reality.
The Crane Lake Township board reviewed construction bids at its May 9 meeting and selected Max Gray Construction, with a bid of $2.978 million, as the primary contractor for the 7,000-square-foot visitor center. Casper Construction was awarded the base campground/RV park bid for $2.102 million. Action on bids for additional alternate options totaling $479,318 was held pending a determination of additional funding for the options.
When Voyageurs National Park was established in 1975, the park was supposed to have four gateway visitor centers at Ash River, Kabetogama, Rainy Lake, and Crane Lake. While the first three came to fruition, Crane Lake’s never made it off the drawing board, until now. Local proponents have been persistent in pursuing a visitor center, but it has only been in recent years that park officials have given the project full support.
The visitor center will include a visitor entrance area, theater, meeting room, gift shop, restrooms with showers, and will include exhibit space for native wildlife and staff offices. The center will be constructed on a recently purchased 29-acre parcel of land that formerly housed Borderland Resort. Crane Lake Township received $950,000 from the Environmental and Natural Resources Trust Fund to purchase the property. The site will also include a full-service campground, a new Department of Natural Resources boat landing, upgraded access roads, a modern playground and necessary infrastructure including water, sewer and electrical service.
While the center is designed to serve the park, the center is being built with state and local resources. In the recently completed Minnesota legislative session, the environment, natural resources, climate, and energy finance and policy bill signed by Gov. Tim Walz included allocations of $1.9 million and $3.1 million for the project. Additional funding commitments have been obtained from the Iron Range Resource and Rehabilitation Board and other sources, bringing the total commitments to around $6 million. The township has also secured state park road account funding of $557,000 and $250,000 from IRRRB to improve Bayside Dr. from Handberg Rd. to the Waters Edge public water access point.
The facilities will be owned by Crane Lake and leased by Voyaguers National Park. VNP Superintendent Bob DeGross has confirmed regional and national level approval of the arrangement, which is similar in concept to one the NPS has at Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park in Maryland.
Creating the exhibit space in the center is a partnership between VNP, the park’s official philanthropic partner, the Voyageurs Conservancy, the U.S. Forest Service and Native Skywatchers Design LLC. The Native Skywatchers initiative seeks to remember and revitalize Indigenous star and earth knowledge. The overarching goal of Native Skywatchers is to communicate the knowledge that Indigenous people traditionally practiced in a sustainable way of living and sustainable engineering through a living and participatory relationship with the above and below, sky and earth.
The exhibits will reinforce VNP’s designation as an International Dark Sky Park by emphasizing dark sky education and interconnected waters. Additional exhibits will focus on regional Indigenous history, an overview of VNP, and information about other area recreational opportunities including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Quetico Provincial Park.
The Park Service has indicated it anticipates the facility will be ready to lease next summer. The Timberjay attempted to contact Crane Lake Town Board Chairman Jerry Pohlman for this article but was unsuccessful by press time on Wednesday.