Waabizheshikana, the Marten Trail: Reconnecting Duluth to a Cleaner St. Louis River

For generations the St. Louis River estuary, which forms the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin before emptying into Lake Superior, was lined with heavy industry: metalworks, shipyards, appliance and furniture factories, lumber mills and U.S. Steel’s Duluth Works. They employed many generations of Duluth residents, often living in company towns such as Riverside and Morgan Park — and they polluted the river with heavy metals, toxic materials and debris that devastated fish and wildlife, clogged channels and contaminated water and soil.

An Area of Concern

In 1987 the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement named 31 Areas of Concern, places where human activity had damaged the Great Lakes. The St. Louis River is the second-largest in the United States, with degraded habitat, restrictions on eating fish and wildlife and on drinking water, and closed beaches. Since the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative began in 2010, federal, state, local and tribal agencies have carried out extensive cleanup, aiming to remove the river from the list while improving its health, opening it up for recreation, and boosting the local economy.

Dredging near Munger Landing as part of the cleanup. Courtesy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In July 2024 Duluth opened a new waterfront recreation area in Morgan Park, once the site of the Duluth Works coking and mill operation and a Superfund site, as part of the Spirit Lake cleanup; the area around Spirit Lake is now considered healthy enough for swimming, boating and fishing. The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that 60% of the work needed to remove the river from the list was done, with delisting on track for 2030.

The Marten Trail

Waabizheshikana (waa-bah-zhay-shay-kuh-nuh), the Marten Trail, began in the 1980s as the Western Waterfront Trail, a roughly three-mile path along the river partly on an abandoned rail line. In 2019 it was renamed to honor the Marten Clan of the Lake Superior Ojibwe. The city is renovating and extending it in phases, funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the State of Minnesota, the city, the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources and U.S. Steel. When finished it will run 10 miles, linking the riverside neighborhoods of West Duluth — Morgan Park, Irving, Fairmount, Norton Park, Riverside, Smithville, Gary-New Duluth and Fond du Lac — once working-class company towns, and giving residents a way to walk or bike across them. It will end at Chambers Grove Park near Jay Cooke State Park, and the long-term vision includes an outdoor classroom and an Indigenous ceremony space at Munger Landing.

Since 2022, the National Park Service’s Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program (RTCA), supported by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, has provided a community planner working with the city on the trail and on parks near historically disadvantaged neighborhoods. David Thomson, RTCA’s Midwest regional program manager, called the trail “a unique example of the cooperative efforts between the EPA’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and RTCA,” and the city’s plan an “impressive vision to connect disadvantaged communities.”

Telling the river’s stories

Duluth consulted the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa on an interpretive plan honoring the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) people’s ties to the river, with representation of the Dakota, who were there first, and of other overlooked people of West Duluth — women, Native Americans, immigrants, Black Americans and people of mixed ancestry. City officials describe the tribe’s elders as invaluable to the process, which weighed folklore and language. Planned features include steel story poles decorated with the estuary’s plants and animals, waypoint cairns of natural and industrial materials, concrete animal tracks and plant patterns, and signs marking points of interest.

The RTCA planner consulted about 20 Native American tribes on the construction of two new segments, which went through the federal cultural and historical review required by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act; one area of interest, Indian Point, was being studied further.

Getting people back on the water

As the cleanup continues, the city and RTCA are helping residents — many of whom long avoided the water because it was unsafe — use the restored river. A three-year program offers families and young people in nearby neighborhoods year-round hiking, canoeing, snowshoeing and fishing, with equipment, transportation and instruction provided, including paddling lessons with local outfitters and a floating classroom, the “Canoemobile.” Funding for the trail has included $500,000 from the city’s parks capital fund, about $5 million from partners, a $1.4 million state grant after the trail was designated regionally significant in 2022, and $1.6 million from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Sources

Based on "Waabizheshikana: The Marten Trail," Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain, with city officials’ remarks rewritten in hubnx’s own words.