The Cut Foot Sioux Trail is a 22-mile (35 km) loop trail in the Chippewa National Forest of Minnesota, USA. It follows gravel and sand forestry roads that are now used for hiking, biking, cross-country skiing and horse back riding. The trail passes by several lakes.
The trail starts at the Cut Foot Sioux Visitor Information Center on Minnesota State Highway 46 in west-central Itasca County. The Center, on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, offers interpretive programs and a fishing pier. From the Center the trail runs west through wooded country past several lakes, including Cut Foot Sioux Lake, then turns north and slopes gradually up to Farley Tower, an old lookout. Turning east, the trail runs along the Northern Divide, then drops down to the Bowstring river before heading south back to the Visitor center.
The trail connects with Simpson Creek Trail, a 13-mile (21 km) trail system through large red pines on a peninsula that extends into Lake Winnibigoshish, and passes through the Cut Foot Experimental Forest, used for studying pine forest management. Walkers may see eagles, osprey and loons on the lakes.
The Cut Foot Sioux Ranger Station, near Lake Winnibigoshish, is the oldest remaining ranger station building in the Forest Service's Eastern Region. A log cabin, it was built in 1904 and abandoned in 1918, but has been restored and is in good condition as of 2008.
US Forest Service Map
Famous quotes containing the words cut, foot and/or trail:
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms 90:10.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662)
“When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And Change with hurried hand has swept these scenes:
The woods have fallen, across the meadow-lot
The hunter’s trail and trap-path is forgot,
And fire has drunk the swamps of evergreens;
Yet for a moment let my fancy plant
These autumn hills again: the wild dove’s haunt,
The wild deer’s walk: in golden umbrage shut,”
—Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821–1873)