Lake Pepin Overlook

In the summer of 1922, Ralph Samuelson of Lake City was convinced that if people could ski on snow, they could ski on water. After trying barrel staves and snow skis with little luck, he shaped two long boards of pine, boiled the tips to curve them, and rigged a leather binding and a tow rope with an iron ring. On July 2, 1922, on Lake Pepin, he leaned back, kept his ski tips up out of the water, and glided across the surface behind his brother's boat. He was the first person known to have waterskied anywhere in the world.

Samuelson never patented the idea, and for decades others were credited. Late in his life the American Water Ski Association recognized him as the true founder of the sport. Lake City still calls itself the birthplace of waterskiing, and a monument along the lakefront marks the achievement. The wide, sheltered water that made his experiment possible is the same water travelers admire from the shore today.

Lake Pepin sits in the Driftless Area, a corner of the Upper Midwest that the last glaciers largely missed. Instead of being scraped flat, the land here was carved by rivers into deep valleys and tall bluffs, and the Mississippi cut a broad trench through it. The bluffs that wall the lake rise several hundred feet above the water, layered in ancient sandstone and limestone laid down when this country lay under shallow tropical seas.

The lake itself is a natural feature, not a dam project. Where the Chippewa River joins the Mississippi from the Wisconsin side at the lake's lower end, it carries a heavy load of sand and gravel and drops it into the bigger river, building a delta that acts as a partial dam. The Mississippi pools up behind it into the wide, slow water of Lake Pepin. It is a rare place to see a great river behaving like a lake, and it has drawn steamboats, sailors, and now recreational boaters for generations.

This is the homeland of the Dakota people, whose name for the land, Mni Sota Makoce, gives Minnesota its name. The Mdewakanton Dakota lived and traveled along this stretch of the Mississippi, and Lake Pepin was a well-known landmark and gathering place on the river long before European fur traders arrived. French voyageurs and traders moved through in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Frontenac, on the lake's shore, is named for a French colonial governor of that era.

Today the shoreline is threaded by the Great River Road, a scenic route that follows the Mississippi and is at its most beautiful along Lake Pepin. Small towns of brick storefronts, marinas, and orchards line the way, and the drive between Red Wing and Wabasha is a favorite for fall color, when the bluffs turn gold and red above the blue water. Across the lake, the Wisconsin village of Pepin claims the pioneer author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was born nearby.

Lake Pepin is one of the best places in the Upper Midwest to watch birds. Bald eagles are here year-round and gather in numbers in winter, when the moving water below Lake City stays open and full of fish. In spring and fall the lake is a rest stop on the Mississippi Flyway, and thousands of tundra swans, canvasbacks, and other waterfowl pause here on migration. Herons and pelicans work the shallows in summer.

Summer is the season of the lake at play, with sailing, boating, and the long resort-town waterfront in full swing. Fall is the show, when the bluffs blaze with color and the swans arrive. Winter turns quiet and stark, with eagles fishing the open channels and ice fishing shanties out on the frozen bays. Spring brings high water, returning birds, and the first sailboats back on Lake Pepin.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.