Paul Lundgren

There are hiking trails and there are historic hiking trails. The Brule-St. Croix Portage section of the North Country Trail in the Town of Solon Springs is peppered with historical markers in the form of eight stones with plaques bearing the names of explorers to the region. Most of them are easy to find; a couple of them are not.

Though there are eight stones, the digital map of the trail on northcountrytrail.org seems to show only seven, and if you aren’t careful looking at your map you could see fewer than that, depending on how collapsed your screen might be.

A brochure map of the Historic Portage Trail and Brule Bog Boardwalk also shows only seven stones, but provides descriptions of all eight “portage trail travelers.” Both maps fail to mark the George Stuntz Stone, perhaps because it had been lost for awhile.

For my part, at the start of my fall 2025 hike, I didn’t really know what I was getting into with regard to the significance of the stones. I saw them on the map and figured they would explain themselves. But they don’t. They are just stones with names and years on them. There is enough explanation, however, on plaques at either end of the portage to get at least the vague sense that the stones recognize non-native explorers who traversed the area in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. (more…)