History
The lake was first named in a map of New France made by Guillaume Delisle at the request of Louis XIV of France in 1703. The lake is thought to be named after Pépin le Bref, father of Charlemagne, as it was not a common surname in the area at the time.
Nicolas Perrot erected the first of a number of fur trade posts, Fort Saint Antoine, in 1786. In 1727 René Boucher de La Perrière and Michel Guignas built Fort Beauharnois on the lake. In 1730 it had to be rebuilt on higher ground. Boucher was the military leader and Father Guignas was a missionary to the Sioux.
In 1890 it was the site of one of the worst maritime disasters on the Mississippi, known as the Sea Wing disaster when the Sea Wing ferry capsized in a bad storm, killing 98 people.
In 1922, Lake City native Ralph Samuelson invented the sport of water skiing on the lake which. Ever since that date, Lake City is known world wide as "the birthplace of waterskiing" and the city celebrates with a festival called Waterski Days every year on the last weekend in June.
The lighthouse at the entrance to the Lake City Marina is the only working lighthouse on the entire Mississippi River
Read more about this topic: Lake Pepin
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)