The Menominee River is a river in northwestern

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

and northeastern

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It is approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
, accessed December 19, 2011 draining a rural forested area of northern Wisconsin and the

Upper Peninsula of Michigan The Upper Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P. – is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula by t ...

into

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...

. Its entire course, with that of its tributary, the

Brule River The Brule River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed December 19, 2011 river in the U.S. states of Michigan and Wisconsin. Nearly the entire course forms a portion of t ...

, forms part of the boundary between the two states.

Description

It is formed approximately northwest of

Iron Mountain, Michigan Iron Mountain is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 7,518 at the 2020 census, down from 7,624 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Dickinson County, in the state's Upper Peninsula. Iron Mountain was named for the va ...

, by the confluence of the Brule and Michigamme rivers. As the Menominee flows southeast it picks up the Pine River and travels past

Kingsford, Michigan Kingsford is a city in Dickinson County in the U.S. state of Michigan, named for the developer Edward G. Kingsford. The population was 5,139 at the 2020 census, a slight increase from the 5,133 recorded at the 2010 census. It is part of the Ir ...

and

Niagara, Wisconsin Niagara is a city in Marinette County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 1,624 at the 2010 census. The city lies to the north of and adjacent to the Town of Niagara. It is part of the Marinette, WI– MI Micropolitan Statistica ...

. It then flows generally south, making broad

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank ( cut bank) and deposits sediments on an inner, convex bank ...

s collecting the

Sturgeon Sturgeon is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretace ...

, Pemebonwon and

Pike Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to: Fish * Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus'' * Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes * ''Esox'', genus of ...

rivers. It enters Green Bay on Lake Michigan from the north between

Marinette, Wisconsin Marinette is a city in and the county seat of Marinette County, Wisconsin, United States. It is located on the south bank of the Menominee River, at its mouth at Green Bay, part of Lake Michigan; to the north is Stephenson Island, part of the ...

and

Menominee, Michigan Menominee ( ) is a city in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 8,599 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. It is the county seat of Menominee County, Michigan, Menominee Cou ...

. Along its course the Menominee River has been converted into a series of large

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

s. The waters contained in these reservoirs are some of the area's deepest and cleanest

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

s. Many of the lands around those waters are managed for recreational use, which ensures conservation and restricts shoreline development of rows of

cottage A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a Cotter (farmer), cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager ...

s and docks. The lakes are pristine, with wild shores of forest lands. The name of the river comes from an

Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...

Algonquian term meaning "

wild rice Wild rice, also called manoomin, Canada rice, Indian rice, or water oats, is any of four species of grasses that form the genus ''Zizania'', and the grain that can be harvested from them. The grain was historically gathered and eaten in both ...

", or "in the place of wild rice". They used the same name for the river as for the historic

Menominee The Menominee (; mez, omǣqnomenēwak meaning ''"Menominee People"'', also spelled Menomini, derived from the Ojibwe language word for "Wild Rice People"; known as ''Mamaceqtaw'', "the people", in the Menominee language) are a federally recog ...

tribe who lived in the area and used the plant as a staple. The Menominee are the only Native American tribe living in Wisconsin today whose origin was in the present-day state. The federally recognized

Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin The Menominee (; mez, omǣqnomenēwak meaning ''"Menominee People"'', also spelled Menomini, derived from the Ojibwe language word for "Wild Rice People"; known as ''Mamaceqtaw'', "the people", in the Menominee language) are a federally recog ...

have a reservation on the

Wolf River (Fox River tributary) The Wolf River is a longU.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed December 19, 2011 tributary of the Fox River in northeastern Wisconsin in the Great Lakes region of the United ...

. The Menominee believe that they were created at the mouth of the Menominee River when the Ancestral Bear emerged from the river mouth and was transformed into the first Menominee by the Creator. The Chippewa lived in the upper portion of the river basin and referred to the river as ''Me-ne-cane Sepe'' or "Many Little Islands River". In the ''

Jesuit Relations ''The Jesuit Relations'', also known as ''Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France'', are chronicles of the Jesuit missions in New France. The works were written annually and printed beginning in 1632 and ending in 1673. Originally written ...

,'' the French

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

priests referred to the river as ''Rivière de la Folle Avoine'' or "Wild Oats River", again a reference to the wild rice. The region through which the river flows was formerly a center of

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the fo ...

mining. Menominee River sediments are contaminated with arsenic at

from industry. The

Back Forty Mine The Back Forty Mine is a proposed open-pit metallic sulfide mine targeting gold and zinc deposits in Menominee County in the South Central part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula next to the Menominee River. Aquila Resources submitted its first per ...

is a proposed gold and zinc

open-pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock (geology), rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a Borrow pit, b ...

near Stephenson, Michigan to be constructed within of the river.

References

Environmental Protection Agency

External links

Friends of the Menominee River
Native Americans website {{authority control Rivers of Michigan Rivers of Wisconsin Borders of Michigan Borders of Wisconsin Tributaries of Lake Michigan Rivers of Iron County, Michigan Rivers of Dickinson County, Michigan Rivers of Menominee County, Michigan Rivers of Marinette County, Wisconsin

Description

See also

References

External links