East Savanna River

East Savanna River
Country	United States
Basin features
Main source	Wolf Lake, Aitkin County, Minnesota 1,266 feet (386 m)
River mouth	1,230 feet (370 m)

The East Savanna River is a small yet historic stream in Aitkin and Saint Louis counties in the U.S. state of Minnesota. With a total length of 15.3 miles (24.6 km), the stream rises in Wolf Lake, a small body of water within a spruce bog in Savanna Portage State Park, and flows northeasterly to the Saint Louis River at Floodwood, Minnesota, whence its waters flow through the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. A few thousand years ago the East Savanna was part of the Mississippi River itself, originating in northeast Minnesota and flowing southwesterly to Big Sandy Lake, from which the great river drained down its present valley to the Gulf of Mexico.

The low divide which now separates the Mississippi tributaries from the East Savanna was part of a historic trade route connecting the Saint Lawrence and Great Lakes to the Mississippi basin, used by fur traders and explorers. Part of that route, including the headwaters of the East and West Savanna Rivers, is now within Savanna Portage State Park.

The river, and the West Savanna River located a half-mile (.8 km) to the west of Wolf Lake, on the other side of the Saint Lawrence River Divide, kept the name given by French explorers, la Savanne. This French word for savanna originally is of American Indian origin, and meant a "treeless area". The word was used here to refer to the marshy grasslands where the river begins and through which it flows. The Ojibwe name, Mashkiig-onigami-ziibi, was more precise, being translated as "marsh-portage river".

...
Wikipedia