Crescent Lake Canoe Route in Northern Minnesota

One of my favorite day trips outside of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota is the Crescent Lake Canoe Route. The Crescent Lake Canoe Route is referenced on the US Forest Service’s website, but there are no maps currently offered. I’m adding maps in this post. I remember when you could pick up a paper map of the route at the Gunflint office in Grand Marais, but that isn’t available anymore.

USFS Map of the Route

About 10 years ago, I tried to get a copy of the old map and route guide from the USFS, but they couldn’t find it. Instead they sent me an old hand drawn map of the route.

Portages

The portages between Crescent Lake and Rice Lake were part of the historic Ojibwe canoe route that ran from Knife Lake to Lake Superior via the Poplar River system, so it’s among the oldest of all the routes in the region with its history going back 1000s of years.

At one point, the USFS had marked all the portages with signs stating the portage name and the distance of each portage. Some of those remain. Some of those have fallen over and can be found if you look around for them.

Backcountry Campsites on the Crescent Lake Canoe Route

There were also backcountry campsites along the route with two or three on Crescent Lake and three on Rice Lake. Most of the campsites are falling into disrepair. Two remain on Crescent, but one is in really bad shape. Two remain on Rice Lake, and last time I paddled rice lake I couldn’t find the third shown in the NW corner of the lake on the above USFS map.

While there are backcountry sites, I’ve found that they are usually occupied by motorboat campers, so I wouldn’t depend on those sites as being available. Instead, it’s better to get a reservation at the Crescent Lake campground and do this trip as a day trip.

Route Access

The easiest way to access the Crescent Lake Canoe Route is to use the boat ramp on Crescent Lake and paddle south to Rice Lake.

You can also access it three other ways. The first two are small USFS roads off of Clara Lake Road. The Slip Lake spur (USFS 1254) takes you to the center of one of the portages. This isn’t an ideal access point, so I’d personally skip it. There are often people boondocking at the end of this road.

The second (USFS 1255) takes you to an abandoned gravel quarry. Park in the quarry and follow a portage trail to Silver Lake. If you want to start in the southern section, this is the access that I’d recommend.

The last access point is via a rough jeep or ATV trail (USFS 1856) to the southern bay of Rice Lake. You will want a car with high clearance on this route. There’s a “boat ramp” at this point as well. This road branches off of Rice Lake Road, which branches off of Clara Lake Road. Rice Lake Road is also very rough and part of an ATV and bike trail.

Public and Private Property Along the Route

This route feels like the Boundary Waters and can feel remote. The land surrounding it in all but one case is public, which means that you own it so take good care of it. The USFS cares for most of your land, but you should practice Leave No Trace to help upkeep it for the rest of us owners. The state of Minnesota cares for the rest of your land along this route.

There’s one private inholding on Rice Lake. It’s owned by a Minneapolis man who has a 256 square foot cabin on his property. The cabin was built in 1985 and is classified as storage, although it is used as living space. Its estimated worth is $717 in 2025. The only access to the cabin is via boat.

A Few Photos

I think this is a great route for a day trip, especially if you get an early start and spend time exploring the shoreline or fishing. Below are a few photos showing what the lakes look like. The stream shot is the Poplar River, which looks like a creek at this point. The other shows the end of a portage.

Crescent Lake Canoe Route Map

I made the following Crescent Lake Canoe Route map. I designed it to fit on 8.5×11-inch paper and when printed at 100% scale will be 1 inch = 1/2 mile in scale. It lists the portages in rods, which is the standard measurement for portages in the area. A rod is 16.5 feet or 5.5 yards. Just over 18 rods fit in a football field. There are 320 rods in a mile.

I left off the campsites that are either extremely rough or gone as far as I can tell. The one backcountry site on Crescent Lake is very popular with motor boaters. The island campsite on Rice is often used and there’s often garbage left on it that needs to be cleaned up by local paddlers or boaters, such as myself. If people would Leave No Trace when using these campsites, the locals wouldn’t have to clean up after them.

This is part of a series of posts that I'll be writing that document public canoe routes and campsites in Cook County, Minnesota and on the Superior National Forest. Many information sheets are disappearing from the federal websites, and I don't want them to disappear forever. When I find them, I'll include them in these articles.

You can buy me a coffee for my efforts at paypal.me/bryanhansel. I'm considering offering high-quality downloads of my maps as a way to buy me a coffee. If that's something you'd be interested in, let me know in the comments.