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 t ...

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 Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. 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 ...

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, forms part of the boundary between the two states.

Description

It is formed approximately northwest of Iron Mountain, Michigan, 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 and Niagara, Wisconsin. 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 ban ...

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, and are descended from other, earlier acipenseriform fish, which date back to the Early ...

, Pemebonwon and Pike 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 ...

and Menominee, Michigan. 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 contr ...

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 or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide ...

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 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 have a reservation on the Wolf River (Fox River tributary). 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 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 ...

mining. Menominee River sediments are contaminated with arsenic at

from industry. The Back Forty Mine is a proposed gold and zinc open-pit 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