The Path of the Paddle Main Street Portage

Path of the Paddle is a canoeing route through the Atikokan region, which is part of The Great Trail. The Quetico Trail Head is opposite the Museum. Paddlers are welcome to leave their packs at the Museum while they pick up supplies in Atikokan.

The portage along Main Street enables paddlers to bypass a meandering section of the Atikokan River and reach the Maukinak Trail Head, also known as Pinkerton's Landing.

Robert and Kathrene Pinkerton arrived in Atikokan in 1912. Robert worked as a cub reported on the Milwaukee Free Press and was later telegraph new editor for The Journal in Milwaukee. After their first fictive effort, a 30,000 word novelette sold to Munsey's Magazine, they departed for the wilds of Canada and built onto a cabin about eight miles from Atikokan where they continued writing. Kathrene wrote Wilderness Wife and Two ends to our Shoestrings and photographed the years spent at the cabin. Robert's writing included fiction, a history of the Hudson's Bay Company, as well as one of the most widely accepted books on canoes and canoeing. The Pinkertons visited Atikokan regularly for supplies and mail by canoe and dogsled for the next five years.

HOW TO GET THERE:

Retrace your steps to the corner of Burns and Main Street. Walk past the Post Office, turn right onto Main Street. The distinctive logo of paddlers in a canoe is attached to signs and lampposts on Main Street.