Hi, I'm Ranger Sam and welcome back to the Namekagon River Visitor Center. In this video
we'll briefly discuss the impacts humans have made on the river. Before European contact,
Native Americans used the river and the forest as their every day resource for basic
survival. Even though they used it everyday, it was a relativity low impact on those resources.
That slightly changed when French and English fur traders came over and started to exchange
their goods for animal pelts, such as the beaver and the otter. And the beaver in particular
became so popular for its coat that gentlemen over in Europe really liked their fur for
top hats! And these top hats and other items of the fur trade became so popular the beaver almost
went extinct and that essentially wiped the fur trade out itself just around mid 1800's.
And that's around the time the Northwoods of Wisconsin became the epicenter for the
logging industry. The logging industry provided new economic opportunities for the Native
Americans as well as new European immigrants. And the river would be used as a mode of transportation
to get the logs down from the forest to the mills. And there would be a lot of these logs
on the river. So it's like when you're coming home from a long holiday weekend, and so is everybody
else, and there's a lot of cars on the road, and really nowhere to go and you're just
kinda stuck there. This is what would happen to these logs and these log jams would be
backed up for miles and miles. And they became so impressive word got down to the cities
and folks from the cities would come up and view this spectacular site. And even though
the logging industry practically disseminated the forests and really wreaked havoc on the
river people still recognized this area was a very special and they started to advocate
for its protection. So the next time you're out and about, whether it's in your neighborhood
and you decide to come up here and hang out on the river, maybe think about the type of
impacts you're making on your environment. Thanks for joining me and we'll see you next
time.