The Rainy Lake Gold Rush
Near International Falls, Minnesota
Long before this was a national park, Rainy Lake had its own gold rush. In July of eighteen ninety three, a prospector named George Davis stepped onto a small island in the lake, panned some quartz, and found gold. News traveled fast, and within a season hundreds of prospectors were streaming north into this remote border country.
By eighteen ninety four the Little American Mine was in full operation, and a boomtown called Rainy Lake City sprang up at the entrance to Black Bay. By that fall it held several hundred people living in tents, covered wagons, log houses, and tar paper shacks, with the usual boomtown mix of saloons and dreams. The gold was real, if modest.
But production stayed low, the rush was over by eighteen ninety eight, and by nineteen oh one Rainy Lake City had emptied out just as quickly as it had filled. Today Little American Island sits within Voyageurs National Park, reachable only by boat, a short trip from the Rainy Lake Visitor Center, its old mine works quietly returning to the woods.
