ANCIENT MAN-MODIFIED TERRAIN FOUND

ANCIENT MAN-MODIFIED TERRAIN 

FOUND IN WESTERN MINNESOTA

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The forty-five passengers of the VIKING WATERWAYS TOUR bus on Saturday, September 28, 2013 witnessed the unplanned re-discovery of two ancient man-modified terrain features in western Minnesota.
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Tour leaders Karl Hoenke and Dr. Myron Paine were telling them how the 1271-foot by 459-foot jetty at Stakke Lake was a strategic facility for the copper haulers of 3700 years ago.  Then the bus driver asked, “Are there two jetties here?  I see one ahead of me, but the one you want is over there.”

JETTY at STAKKR LAKR.

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This man-made jetty is located a strategic location.  The jetty is located seven miles from the Stinking Lake.  Stinking Lake is at the highest elevation of the Buffalo River that can float a boat.  The copper haulers, c1,700 to 1,200 BC, portaged the cargo directly from Stinking Lake to the jetty.  Then they moved their boats, which weighed a ton, via shorter portages through Duck, La Belle, Boyer, and Park Lakes to Stakke Lake. The jetty at Stakke Lake was a rendezvous place for hundreds of boats and thousands of men as they waited for the spring thaw.  When the thaw arrived, they launched hundreds of boats to transport 500 tons of copper away from Lake Superior.

This man-made jetty is located a strategic location.  The jetty is located seven miles from the Stinking Lake.  Stinking Lake is at the highest elevation of the Buffalo River that can float a boat. 
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COPPER MINE FIELD at ILLE ROYALE

The copper miners of 4,200 to 3,200 left behind nearly 10,000 pits near Lake Superior.

One estimate is that they hauled away 500 tons of copper per year for the thousand years.

The number of boats required to haul the copper is at least 100 boats per year. 

 The copper haulers, c1,700 to 1,200 BC, portaged the cargo directly from Stinking Lake to the jetty.  Then they moved their boats, which weighed a ton, via shorter portages through Duck, La Belle, Boyer, and Park Lakes to Stakke Lake. The jetty at Stakke Lake was a rendezvous place for hundreds of boats and thousands of men as they waited for the spring thaw.  When the thaw arrived, they launched hundreds of boats to transport 500 tons of copper away from Lake Superior.
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The bus driver had just seen another jetty, which may have been centuries older than the newer jetty that Hoenke and Paine were describing.

The Old Jetty at Stakke Lake

The old jetty at stake lake is the rectangle above "Lake" in the center of the image. This jetty appears to be the first jetty built in Stakke Lake.  The surface is just above the water level of 1364 feet elevation.  The ancient hydraulic engineers apparently determined they could raise the lake level to 1380 feet before the water would spill down Hay Creek to the north.  So they built a second jetty with an area as big as five city blocks and a surface at 1385 feet. [That jetty is off the picture just below the "Stakke" name]

The old jetty at stake lake is the rectangle above "Lake" in the center of the image. This jetty appears to be the first jetty built in Stakke Lake.  The surface is just above the water level of 1364 feet elevation.  The ancient hydraulic engineers apparently determined they could raise the lake level to 1380 feet before the water would spill down Hay Creek to the north.  
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So they built a second jetty with an area as big as five city blocks and a surface at 1385 feet. [That jetty is off the picture just below the "Stakke" name]
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Later analysis of the two jetties indicates an evolution that may have spanned centuries.  That evolution confirms Hoenke and Paine’s beliefs that the copper haulers raised the dam between Middle and Big Cormorant Lakes to an elevation of 1380 feet.   At that height Stakke Lake became nine miles long.  Stakke Lake enabled rowing between the new jetty at Stakke Lake and the dam between Middle and Big Cormorant Lakes.
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The thousands of men in hundreds of boats that left Stakke Lake jetty every spring rowed to Minneapolis to load five tons of copper in each boat.  They were part of the flotilla that removed 940 million pounds of pure copper from Lake Superior.
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Then Mark Hilde guided the bus driver to the Green Valley golf course to look at the mooring stones there.  There were four stones with holes in them.  Later analysis shows that the stone on the highest ground may have held a flagpole.
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The three other stones may have moored boats in a secure harbor.  The water level of that harbor would have had to be 1380 feet to make the secure harbor.
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STONES WITH HOLES at HOUGLAND LAKE

The four stones with holes at HOUGLAND Lake appear to indicate that the spot was either a gathering place, a command center, or both.  The three mooring stones neat the lake shore implies several boats loading or unloading at the same time.  The boats probably moved into the larger harbor to anchor.

That 1380 feet elevation fits the jetty and dam configuration.  The flag and mooring stones might have been a site for a gathering place or for high commanders of the Stakke Lake-Cormorant Lake operation during the copper hauling era. 
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The evidence provides strong support to the hypothesis that thousands of men and hundreds of boats launched from Stakke Lake in western Minnesota every year for hundreds of years.
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After those unexpected re-discoveries, the rest of the tour was interesting but anti-climatic.  The tourists accepted without comment the discussion of the dam that created Lake Alexandria.   They saw the still visible dikes that retained the water of Lake Alexandria into a seventeen-mile long lake.
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The Kensington Rune Stone, the 14th century artifacts from the Viking Waterway, the dams, dikes and harbors, and the two Viking Ships in museums all confirmed that the Vikings had come to western Minnesota 1,000 years ago because they had found the copper haulers waterway.  They knew how to restore the waterway operation. 
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The Vikings used the Viking Waterway to be traders from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico during the Mississippi culture period.