Itasca State Park - Landscape

Landscape

Lake Itasca, the official source of the Mississippi River and a scenic area of northern Minnesota, has remained relatively unchanged from its natural state. Most of the area has a heavy growth of timber that includes virgin red pine, which is also Minnesota's state tree. Some of the red pine in Itasca are over 200 years old.

The Itasca terrain is sometimes referred to as "knob and kettle." The knobs are mounds of debris deposited directly by the ice near the edge of glaciers or by melt–water streams flowing on or under the glacier's surface. The kettles are depressions, usually filled with water, formed by dormant ice masses buried or partially buried under glacial debris that later melted. The retreat of the ice around 10,000 years ago left behind 157 lakes of varying size that cover 3,000 acres (12 km2) of Itasca State Park. The glaciers deposited a moraine, a combination of silt, clay, sand, and gravel that covers the landscape to a depth of around 680 feet (210 m). The park also integrates 27,500 acres (111 km2) of upland and 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) of swamp.