Highway 61 to Bay Point Park:
A smorgasbord paddle that courses through the Cannon River bottomlands after an encore performance of bluffs before quietly slipping into the Mississippi River backwaters, this scenic trip packs enough for a long weekend…but you’ll only need a few hours.
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Trip Report Date: October 25, 2023
Skill Level: Beginner-Intermediate due to the potential navigability issues plus paddling on the Mississippi River
Class Difficulty: Flatwater
Gradient:
≈1′ per mile
Gauge Recorded on this Trip:
Welch: ht/ft: 4.2 | cfs: 680
Current Levels:
Welch: ht/ft: 4.63 | cfs: 1020
Recommended Levels:
We recommend this level. Another great resource for correlating water levels is Minnesota’s DNR Water Level page. The data is different but much more user-friendly. 300-1,540 cfs are “Medium” levels. 300-700 cfs is ideal.
Put-In:
Cannon River public access, Highway 61, Red Wing, Minnesota
GPS: 44.58098, -92.65467
Take-Out:
Bay Point Park boat ramp via Levee Road on the Mississippi River, Red Wing
GPS: 44.56775, -92.73897
Time: Put in at 10:15a. Out at 1:15p.
Total Time: 3h
Miles Paddled: 10.5
Wildlife:
Bald eagles, geese, ducks, osprey, and sandhill cranes.
Shuttle Information:
6.5 miles by road. From the takeout, go west on Levee Road and then west on Highway 61. Cross the river and then turn left onto Green Spring Road to the wayside boat access. The bicycle option is gorgeous, safe, fun, and informative (passing by/through an archeological site as it does). It’s also 6.5 miles, most of it along the Cannon Valley Trail except for the final half-mile that does require riding on the shoulder of Highway 61 and then crossing over it to get to Green Spring Road. There is a $7 day-use fee, but for this trip especially it’s worth every penny.
Background:
This trip covers the final section of the Cannon River in southeastern Minnesota, starting at the Highway 61 bridge – the last access on the river – until it reaches the Mississippi River about seven miles downstream. The trip ends at the first available access in Red Wing at a boat launch in a city park about 3.5 miles downstream from the confluence.
It was day three of our foray in Red Wing, Minnesota, and the ad hoc exploratory committee of two to paddle the Cannon River from its last dam in Cannon Falls to its confluence at the Mississippi River. The torrential rains from the preceding day had subsided (for now), and the light to paddle the last leg of the Cannon was as green as the mile marker buoys lining the big muddy. Of the three sections of the Cannon that I wanted to cover, I was most curious and intrigued by this trip. Why? Because there’s something about confluences that I personally find enthralling – the transition from one place to another (even though, ultimately, it’s all apiece). But some confluences are more captivating than others. And, to be fair, it’s usually a very subtle experience slipping into a new river, as it’s not always clear where one ends (and what does “end” even mean when hydrology is a cycle?). So, some of this is imaginative. But so is the concept of money or a fat man in a red suit in a sleigh powered by flying reindeer, and both capitalism and Christmas have done quite well for themselves (especially when conflated).
What needs no imagination, however, is the powerful reality of a landscape cut off from civilization and free from development. Whatever geological features such a space possesses, it commands awe in its mere simplicity and natural state. Indeed, it’s one of wonder. The Cannon River Bottoms is by conservative estimates 7 square miles, but the ultimate intimacy of paddling here is so much more than that. While this trip begins at a highway bridge, it then whiles its way for a half-dozen miles through a marshy sprawl and matrix of islands, sloughs, side channels, and backwaters – all without sight or sound of civilization. Depending on how strict or literal the concepts of abandonment or nothingness are applied, one might take issue with ascribing wilderness-like features on a river trip that passes under an old road, power lines, railroad tracks, and only a mile away from a Target and Walmart. Touché. But the odds of you sensing signs of at least human life for at least the first 2/3 of this trip are next to nix. To me, that’s plenty beguiling.
Incidentally, it’s also where and how the river got its name (well, it’s European name). As French “explorers” were tootled around the Great Lakes and what would become the Upper Midwest while quietly claiming half a continent in the 16th and 17th Centuries, they traded extensively with indigenous peoples. “Parlez-vous francais?” one person said, and while the others scratched their heads or looked away, another came up with a bright idea lickety-split: “How about a couple gaudy baubles and this here handsome kettle for all the beaver pelts you got? Back home in gay Paree, it’s all the rage. Also, we’ll throw in this axe and musket for your women. Now, who wants to be converted?” The Indians didn’t know what to do, to which Henri, puzzled, added “How you say, ‘holy cow,’ no?” The Natives smiled in good accord and a moment later – eerily recapitulating a scene from Monty Python’s The Holy Grail – the Frenchman commanded, “Pierre, fetchez la vache.”
Some of that reenactment might be wrapped in the gauzy haze of historical interpretation, but what is commonly accepted is the French traders’ observation of the cached canoes near the mouth of the Cannon River. For here lied a village whose folks had learned and leaned on agriculture to survive and thrive for centuries. The Frenchmen called the confluence “la riviere aux canots.” How “canoe” is not the French word for canoe is totally lost on me, just as how “can-O” became “CAN-in,” but apparently canot is the word (or was several hundred years ago). And apparently all the Swedes and Norwegians who’d later settle in Minnesota sided with “cannon” as both the pronunciation and spelling.
Yes, I did want to study history when I went to college. No, I did not receive a degree in history. But the Cannon River was originally named “Inyan Bosndata” by the Dakota Tribe, which means “standing rock” and refers to a spire-like outcrop of sandstone found along the river near present day Northfield and Cannon Falls (which stretch of the river runs in Dakota County).
Readers of this site will know that we always want to give thanks to the trailblazers that came before us for putting these trips on the map and pointing out the good, bad, gorgeous, and ugly. But depending on the section of water being covered, some featured trips will be more descriptive than others. And sometimes there’s simply little need to describe a place beyond a single paragraph. This trip is the fourth section of the Cannon River recommended by Lynne and Robert Diebel in their excellent guidebook, Paddling Southern Minnesota, and arguably the most informative. With evocations of being a “maze of waterways” that changes depending on water levels and a potentially dangerous route of deadfall, dead ends, and impassable channels – again, for miles on end – this is why I was most intrigued by this final section of the Cannon: the challenge, the allure of the unknown – indeed, the call of the wild.
Or at least as “wild” as an undeveloped river corridor of backwaters lined with wood duck houses is.
Overview:
While the boat launch at Highway 61 (technically Green Spring Road) has ample room for parking and is essentially a wayside, the actual access to the water is a steep and skinny slick path. But it’s free (and even after having rained 2″ the previous day, it wasn’t muddy). At the risk of sounding sensationalist, after passing under the highway bridge here there’s wonderfully nothing for the next seven miles. Indeed, other than an abandoned road bridge and then a railroad bridge, there are no other bridges on this 10.5-mile trip. It’s not often a paddle trip slips into ultimate solitude so soon.
The bountiful beauty of riverside bluffs that ratchets up in earnest in Cannon Falls some 20 miles upstream tapers towards the Mississippi River, but you wouldn’t know that for the first mile or so on this trip, especially above the left bank. A quick jog right-left-right takes you to the abandoned bridge at Cannon Bottom Road half a mile down from Highway 61. A quick word about this bridge… The Diebels caution that “deadfalls often form a massive blockade” here, but when I paddled this trip – again, 24 hours after torrential rain – it was all smooth sailing. I have no idea how long ago this road was in use for vehicles, but it’s definitely been a minute. All the same, it’s plenty accessible via Collischan Road, which runs perpendicular to it. For paddlers, it serves little purpose or appeal, beside the visual – abandoned infrastructure is kind of cool in a spooky Twilight Zone-y way (see “What We Liked” below for more on this). But it has the look and feel of a time-honored place for teenage hangs as well as for fishing.
Half a mile below this bridge the river will bend abruptly to the right and away from the bluffs. For another half-mile it heads due south, then ricochets to the left and veers northeast for the next four miles. Here, you’ll see views of the bike path and pass an attractive steep sandbank. You might notice also what appears to be a creek flowing into the river stage-right. This actually is a side channel of the Cannon River itself that veers from the main channel 1.5 miles upstream of the Highway 61 bridge. (In other words, all of the land on your right so far has been an enormous island!) Clusters of deadfall lie strewn hither-yon, and with them, coveted trash snagged on stray limbs. The scattered trash isn’t as copious as our previous trip from Welch to Highway 61, but it’s still pretty bad. (Why littering your tin of chewing tobacco, bottle of Glacial Ice Gatorade, and package of pizza-flavored Combos continues to be seen as bad-ass is just lost on me…) Unless the current is pushy, the river here averages about 100’ wide, so avoiding these snaggletooth strainers shouldn’t be too challenging. As your boat’s bow noses forward and the river moseys northeast, you might still see silhouetted bluffs, but only in the backdrop (and only when the trees are leafless).
In the next few miles the surrounding landscape changes subtly from swampy bottomlands to sprawling marsh. The banks will range from 10’ tall and grassy to sandbar beaches at best a foot above the river. If you’re the kind of paddler who wants/needs to know where you are A) at all times or B) on the map, then you can either cheat and use your phone or rest assured that when you get to the power lines you’ve reached the 1/3 mark of this trip – a helpful reference point, in my opinion. Furthermore, in another mile you’ll paddle under a railroad bridge. Given the sandy banks, a sharp left bend towards the bridge, and the bridge’s pylons (pile on?), grandiose logjams get stuck here. Even though the river is 200’ wide in this section, I had to portage over gnarled clots of wrought wood to get through on the far left side of the bridge. Shortly after the bridge the whole environs open up to big-sky marsh. The feint outline of bluffs in the way back? Yeah, that’s Wisconsin.
For the next few miles it’s nothing but you, a slew of sandbars, wildlife, and a handful of finger-like sloughs. The Diebels’ map and Google maps are not identical. The former shows an obvious right channel where the river splits around a large island, whereas the latter displays a 50/50 split of equally sized side channels. Of all the minutia and field notes I scribble while paddling, I noted nothing for this left-right dilemma, so it must not have mattered much which to take. But in fairness to the Diebels, they advise following the right channel. Either way, both channels rejoin a mile or so later.
Take your time here and imbibe the untamed landscape. Too shallow and too clustered with deadfall for motor boats, it’s really only paddlers and wildlife that can access the heart of the Cannon River Bottoms. It’s not only an officially recognized Important Bird Area (or IBA), much of this area is a dedicated conservation easement protected unto perpetuity by the Red Wing Wildlife League (RWWL). Since the protected area comprises over 2,800 acres, you’ll see signs now and again that read “No Trespassing Red Wing Wildlife League Members Only.” It should come as a surprise to precisely no one that I’m generally none too fond of “members only” clubs, cliques, covens, or what have you. But I have to respect anything that protects land from the mindless blade of a plow beneath the banner of soulless development. And if it connects kids to the land and natural world – by disconnecting them from their devices – then all the better. For while there probably is an app for “the land ethic,” IRL will always oust url.
Whether by hook or crook, chasing rabbit holes, dumb luck, dead reckoning, or taking out your phone to find out where the bloody hell you are – eventually, you’ll end up on the Mississippi River. Not unlike an ugly game that ends up in a win, a home construction project that takes way longer than it should have, doing some long-distance event, or just making a basic promise, it doesn’t really matter how you get there, just that you’re finally there and can claim some small victory. That’s all that counts anyway in the history books. Honestly, there are lots of ways to find the Mississippi – and there are as many ways to get lost in its backwaters. I didn’t know when or where it would happen; I just followed what seemed intuitive and looked for a much broader body of water that would be perpendicular to the one I was on – and flowing from left to right (south). Indeed, somewhere toward the mouth I did encounter my first other human, on a small fishing boat. A local, I deduced, by piloting an engine still in the backwaters of I think the Cannon River. Anyway, after saying hello and whatnot I stated “I’m guessing I should I go this way…?” – meaning the relative concept of downstream when the gradient you’re on is less than one foot. To which the person replied with perfect poise and Zen-like shit-you-not, “The water will take you where you need to go.”
I mean, come on! You can’t make that up.
For me, it was easy: there were so many fishing boats out on the big river you’d think it was opening day of the season (and not noon on a cold and cloudy Wednesday in late October). Once and wherever you end up on the Mississippi River, turn right. You’ve now reached the 2/3 mark of the trip; from here it’s about 3.5 miles to the take-out. Spoiler alert: there’s not a whole lot to describe in what the Car Talk brothers used to call “the third half” of the show. The whole right side is RWWL land, punctuated by occasional shacks and houses built atop stilts. If you’re on the lookout for it and feel so inclined, there is a neat little break on the right bank you could paddle into and access the Espen Island Wildlife Management Area – but be prepared to piss off some hunters…
On the Mississippi, you’ll see mileage markers on green buoys in the main channel, and of course Wisconsin is on the opposite side (which isn’t something you get to see or say too often in a paddling blog that mostly covers Wisconsin waterways). There were no barges to keep a wide berth from on my paddle, just lots of little motor boats out fishing. The rule of thumb here is to stay to the right of the green buoys to keep out of harm’s way. If a barge does pass you, you’ll want to turn in the direction of the wake – the tip of your boat like a compass’s needle pointing to true north – to avoid getting capsized.
You won’t be able to see the outline of Red Wing until about half a mile out, due to the curvature of the river. Like so many cities on the Mississippi, Red Wing is situated on a crescent-shaped bend. But long before you’ll see any buildings, or the big bluff behind the buildings (see below), you’ll see the three Minnesota-big white teepee polls indicating Bay Point Park. (Minneapolis has a huge spoon with a cherry; Bemidji has Paul and his blue Babe; Red Wing has teepee polls.) Pun fully intended, you’ll slip into the Ole Miss Marina – yup, that is its name – and wend around the private docks til you find the boat ramp. Think of the park as a whale’s tail; the takeout is at the bottom of the left side of the tail – to the right of and after the teepee.
What we liked:
I loved this trip! Would I feel the same way if I did it again? Probably not – and definitely not in a different time of the year (melancholy late October was pitch perfect mise-en-scene). But this kind of unrepeatable virginity can be said about a lot of experiences; the second time you see The Flaming Lips live will never live up to the first time… As it happened, I ended up paddling this trip alone – my first solo paddle in months – and while I always love and am grateful for company/ companionship while on a river, some trips truly do lend themselves to a more solitary experience. The “moody, broody” backwater marsh of the Mississippi River at the Cannon River’s mouth is one of those trips. The feeling of solitude is usually illusory, but it was absolute and palpable here at the Cannon River bottoms.
My favorite part of this trip was the veritable no-man’s-land between the two rivers. In particular, there was one stretch where wild cucumber (I think) took over the banks with shameless, reckless abandon, that kind of propagation reserved only for invasive species. Draped over the banks with woeful beauty, it looked like something out of a low-grade sci-fi flick from the ‘80s, and it went on and on and on. It was very cool…unless it actually is an invasive species, in which case it’s definitely not cool. But the way a long-neglected fridge will produce prodigious qualities and quantities of mold in every color of green, blue, and yellow, is cool, it’s still kind of cool to see something alive like this just run amok.
I also loved the decommissioned bridge at Cannon Bottom Road. Built over a century ago, it was one of three total bridges spanning the main and south channels of the Cannon River and was part of a military road from the 1850s that connected Mendota to Wabasha but then superseded in the 1930s by what would eventually become Highway 61. (Check out this endearing site for more info and interesting photos) Looking at the landscape now, you’d never know – and that’s what I think is positively riveting about castaway infrastructure. Some people believe in ghosts and haunted houses, I like to visit ruins.
On a side note that brings it all full circle, when Barry wrote about his trip from Cannon Falls to Welch he referenced the book, The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, after paddling past a permanently closed campground. I don’t mind admitting that I had never heard of this book before, even though I’ve long been drawn to abandoned buildings and stranded villages, ghost towns, defunct but never torn down amusement parks, etc – anywhere development has been surrendered to rerum natura like so many sloughed oxbows. So, after re-reading his post, I picked up a copy from the library and have just delighted in it. Essentially, it’s an enormous thought experiment about what would happen if all of humanity just disappeared overnight – how the natural world would respond and accord without people anymore. From the obvious boons of reforestation and recovery of endangered species to the titillating vision of how the island of Manhattan would eventually revert to a state that the Dutch first saw it in the 1600s or how quickly the Panama Canal would come undone to the less intuitive and downright ominous implications of no people to operate nuclear power sites, petroleum reserves, and radioactive waste, the book is awash in wonder and powerfully evocative imagination. I highly recommend it – and thanks Barry!
Incidentally, on the Highway 61 bridge someone spray-painted “I Wanna Get Better,” which made me smile. Even if that’s the single most passive-aggressive cry for help in the history of vigilantism, it still takes courage to commit to something like that. As I’ve noted many times before, I love graffiti – it’s one of the very few human attributes I enjoy while paddling, which otherwise is an escape from the human world.
What we didn’t like:
I won’t mount the same high horse I saddled in the Cannon River III report about trash, but I do feel obliged, nonetheless, to point out the sprawling flotsam and jetsam. It’s abusive and absolutely uncalled for. Full stop.
Otherwise, the Mississippi miles are a little monotonous.
If we did this trip again:
I thoroughly enjoyed this trip and would do it again in a heartbeat. But I’d avoid this trip on hot sunny days, as there’s just no refuge on the second half of the trip on account of the treeless marsh and the wide expanse of the Mississippi River. I’d also be sure to consult the Minnesota DNR hunting seasons, since 2/3 of this trip lie along the banks of the Red Wing Wildlife League.
If time allowed, I’d also add 2.5 miles by skipping Bay Point Park to take advantage of the unique novelty and cool views of downtown Red Wing, a quintessential Mississippi River town, as well as the startlingly tall and beautiful Barn Bluff (aka He Mni Can) that lords directly over the big river on the right, and take out just past it at the Colvill Park boat launch. If nothing else, go to the bluff for a delightful hike – there are many trails to tailor how many miles you want to tromp – and soaring views of the cute town below you.
Also, do yourself a favor and while away in downtown Red Wing. There are lots of quaint shops and excellent places to eat. If you stop by Fair Trade Books and tell them it’s your first time there, you’ll receive a gift; just remember, “books make great gifts.” The proprietors there are good folks, one of whom is a die-hard paddler herself.
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Related Information:
Cannon River I: Faribault to Dundas
Cannon River II: Cannon Falls to Welch
Cannon River III: Welch to Highway 61
Camp: Frontenac State Park
General: Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Guide: Paddling Southern Minnesota
Wikipedia: Cannon River
Photo Gallery:
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