The High Falls and other waterfalls and rapids upstream necessitated a historically important portage on a fur trade route between the Great Lakes and inland Canada.

[5] In what is now Grand Portage State Park, upwelling magma did not reach the surface but intruded into fractures in the Rove Formation, cooling more slowly into diabase rather than basalt.

This post-glacial rebound plus draining of the lake caused the shoreline to recede, first exposing the ridges of the park as islands, then leaving the entire area above water.

A more boreal forest appears on ridges and slopes, with black spruce joining the previously listed conifers intermixed with additional birch and aspen.

Waterfowl and raptors such as osprey frequent the Pigeon River, which also attracts walleye, northern pike, and rainbow smelt for their spring spawning.

At the beginning of historical times Grand Portage and the Pigeon River lay along the border between Dakota land to the south and Cree to the north.

[9] The Pigeon River, an otherwise useful route from the Great Lakes to inland Canada, was impassable over its last 22 miles (35 km) due to the waterfalls and rapids.

To avoid this stretch early native inhabitants developed a footpath known as Kitchi Onigaming in the Ojibwe language, a name translated by French commercial explorers as Grand Portage, or "the Great Carrying Place."

When the U.S. began negotiating the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe with the region's Ojibwe, hard-bargaining Grand Portage band leaders such as Adikoons secured a reservation within their traditional territory instead of being displaced west.

In 1899 a series of sluices, dams, and flumes were built to float the logs safely around the waterfalls and gorges; remains of the wooden timber slide around the High Falls are still visible on the Canadian side.

[3] It took so long to finalize the land deal that another entire Minnesota state park, Glendalough, had been authorized, developed, and dedicated in the meantime.

A further 3.5 miles (5.6 km) of hiking trail leads to the 30-foot (9 m) Middle Falls and provides distant views of Lake Superior and Isle Royale from hilltops.

The closest camping is in Ontario's adjacent Pigeon River Provincial Park or in the unincorporated community of Grand Portage, Minnesota.

Two Eastern Europeans were dropped off by a paid accomplice on the Canadian side of the border and waded across the Pigeon River near Middle Falls.

Instead the rough terrain exhausted them and they fled from the woods toward a nearby duty-free shop in front of Border Patrol officers, who took them into custody and alerted other agents who arrested the waiting driver.