The Gooseberry, like many of its neighboring streams, has an irregular discharge highly dependent on runoff from rain and snow melt.

The English name for the Gooseberry River first appeared in 1823 on a map made by Major Stephen Harriman Long during his expedition of the Canada–US border region.

The Amygadloids erode faster than basalt, which then breaks off in large pieces, causing the high cliffs over which the river flows.

[15] To the southwest of the mouth is a lower cliff of only 10 feet, which was probably once attached to the high bluff before the river cut a channel between them.

[15] At the mouth, the flow of the river meets the opposing force of storms on the lake, kicking up a bar of red pebbles and chalcedony agates.

[7] Accordingly, the flow is heaviest during the spring snow melt,[7] and comparatively the river may run nearly dry during the summer.

[16] Gooseberry River is populated by brook, brown, and rainbow trout in the stretches above the barrier falls, and sees runs of steelhead in April and May.

[16] It is situated in a mixed evergreen, aspen, and birch forest with colonies of Arctic–alpine plants which enjoy Lake Superior's moderating effect on the local climate.

In July 1899, Colonel John H. Knight and former Senator of Wisconsin William Freeman Vilas, owners of the Superior Lumber Company, acquired for $1,000,000 land around the Gooseberry River estimated to contain four hundred million feet of standing pine.

[18] Logs felled from the forests around the Gooseberry were rafted to Knight and Vilas's lumber mills in Ashland, Wisconsin.

[23] A sleigh road connecting Two Harbors and Beaver Bay ran alongside the railway through the upper Gooseberry watershed.