Big Bog State Recreation Area

Big Bog State Recreation Area, a recent addition to the Minnesota state park system, is located on Minnesota State Highway 72, north of Waskish, Minnesota. It covers 9,459 acres (38.3 km²), primarily swamps, bogs, and upland "islands".

The park was started by local grassroots efforts in 2002, it became a state recreation area and officially opened in June 2006. Common trees include tamarack, tag alder, cedar, diamond willow, black and white spruce, jackpine, and ash and black ash with paper birch, "popple" or quaking aspen, white and red pines in the uplands. There are numerous rare plants, including carnivorous sundews and pitcher plants. Animals include bald eagles, wolves, black bears, white-tailed deer, and moose.

The "Big Bog" is composed mostly of wetlands and is larger than the state of Rhode Island. The name had shown up previously in maps, such as by the National Geographic Society. The greater Big Bog region stretches from jackpine forests north of Upper Red Lake in Beltrami County, Minnesota and Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota to the communities along U.S. Route 71 leading to International Falls (Mizpah, Margie, Indus, and Littlefork) in Koochiching County, Minnesota. It is also almost entirely unpopulated, except for the town of Waskish along Highway 72.

Read more about Big Bog State Recreation Area:  History, Bog Walk, Natural Landmark Designation

Famous quotes containing the words big, bog, state, recreation and/or area:

    A big family must be fun. I imagine it makes you feel you belong to something.
    Barré Lyndon (1896–1972)

    Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,
    They lisped in accents mild,
    But when I asked them to explain
    They grew a little wild.
    Stevie Smith (1902–1971)

    The state has no religion for the simple reason that it has each and everyone.
    Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)

    Media mystifications should not obfuscate a simple, perceivable fact; Black teenage girls do not create poverty by having babies. Quite the contrary, they have babies at such a young age precisely because they are poor—because they do not have the opportunity to acquire an education, because meaningful, well-paying jobs and creative forms of recreation are not accessible to them ... because safe, effective forms of contraception are not available to them.
    Angela Davis (b. 1944)

    Whatever an artist’s personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.
    Willem De Kooning (b. 1904)