Grand Portage National Monument

Reconstructed North West Company trading headquarters in extreme northeastern Minnesota. Since the NWC was a Canadian firm, it wasn't particularly welcome at this location, and moved north in 1802. This reconstruction dates from the 1950s.

Reconstructions of historic buildings are not currently fashionable, so this complex is a bit of an anomoly within the National Parks system. It's a little misleading; there's the stockade, three buildings, logs marking the locations of a couple more structures, and a couple gardens; outside the fence there are mockups of voyageur and Indian settlements which are much smaller than the originals they are standing in for. The overall effect is rather parklike, and pleasant, but it lacks the bustle and interest of what was certainly a small village within the stockade; there were nearly twenty buildings in the place in the late eighteenth century.

What is there is absolutely delightful. Where Colonial Michilimackinac, a similar place, overwhelms you with buildings and explanations, this monument maximizes its impact by concentrating on getting some crucial details just right. Reenactors serve as hosts and move comfortably between their historical personas and their modern selves, and the buildings house some carefully selected artifacts, arranged pretty much as you'd expect them to be arranged in a real trading post.

The larger building, on the right, is the great hall; the smaller building is the kitchen which fed the traders and company officers when they were at the headquarters. The third building, a boat house, is outside the stockade.