The Brule River is a river of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

. The Brule River originates at Vista Lake in the

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW or BWCA) comprises of pristine forests, glacial lakes, and streams in the Superior National Forest. Located entirely within the U.S. state of Minnesota at the Boundary Waters, the wilderness are ...

and flows U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
, accessed May 2, 2012 east and southeast, terminating at

Lake Superior Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface areaThe Caspian Sea is the largest lake, but is saline, not freshwater. Lake Michigan–Huron has a larger combined surface area than Superior, but is normally considered tw ...

approximately northeast of

Grand Marais, Minnesota Grand Marais ( ) is a city and the county seat of Cook County, Minnesota, Cook County, Minnesota, United States, of which it is the only municipality. It is on Lake Superior's North Shore. Grand Marais had a population of 1,337 at the 2020 Unit ...

, within the boundaries of

Judge C. R. Magney State Park Judge C. R. Magney State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of Minnesota, on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was named for Clarence R. Magney, a former mayor of Duluth and justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who was instrumental i ...

. A major tributary is the

South Brule River South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both west and east. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþaz' ...

, which rises at the east end of Brule Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness The river's original name of (Burnt Wood River) may have referenced a forest fire. Brule River is a name derived from the French meaning "burnt"; the English name has lost the diacritic and has an anglicized, monosyllabic pronunciation ( ). Half of the river disappears into a

pothole A pothole is a pot-shaped depression in a road surface, usually asphalt pavement, where traffic has removed broken pieces of the pavement. It is usually the result of water in the underlying soil structure and traffic passing over the affecte ...

known as "the Devil's Kettle" in

. Studies in 2017 showed that the water comes up at the bottom of the river near the kettle.

See also

References

Further reading