This park near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is one of our favorites!
Bear Head Lake State Park is located in Minnesota’s Iron Range, not far from Lake Vermilion and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In fact the park offers a kind of “Boundary Waters Light” in that although motors are allowed in the lake it has a 10 mph speed limit and outside of a boat launch, beach and a few docks there is almost no development on it, just the firs, pines and rock you find around most northeastern Minnesota lakes. A few years back it was voted the most popular state park in the country!
The park covers just under 700 acres between the towns of Tower and Ely,
Minnesota. In addition to encompassing all of Bear Head Lake it also includes several other smaller lakes. The campground has 73 semi-modern sites, 45 of them with electricity and can handle units up to 60 feet long. It has a dump station, potable water, three restrooms with flush toilets and two shower buildings. There are also a couple of canoe in sites as well as four backpack sites.
Many of the activities in the park revolve around the lake. It has a nice beach area
with picnic tables and a pavilion not far from the boat launch which also has a fishing pier. The lake is big enough to keep you interested, but not so big you’ll get lost on it. It took us about half a day to poke our way around most of the shoreline in our canoe while watching the wildlife and enjoying the day.
There’s also some good hiking in the park. We hiked from the campground up to Blueberry Lake (Where most of the backpack sites are.). It was about 10 miles round trip with a lot of rocky ups and downs. We’ve also seen quite a few eagles at Bear Head Lake. It’s also home to loons, wolves, black bears and moose. You can learn more about the park on its website.
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