Pine Mountain Campground

On the shore of Devil Track Lake ten minutes east of Grand Marais in Cook County, Minnesota—on the North Shore of Lake Superior where the Sawtooth Mountains' basalt ridges descend to the world's largest freshwater lake by surface area, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness begins its million-acre lake-and-portage interior, and the Gunflint Trail's 57-mile corridor reaches into the most remote corner of accessible Minnesota wilderness at the Minnesota-Ontario border—Pine Mountain Campground provides 20 tent and RV sites on Devil Track Lake with electric and water hookups at most sites, a dump station, and the immediate Grand Marais and North Shore access that the town's art colony, the North House Folk School, the Superior Hiking Trail, and the BWCA's southern trailheads make the most geologically and culturally distinctive camping corridor in the upper Midwest. The Devil Track Lake setting, the Grand Marais ten-minute proximity, and the Boundary Waters access position Pine Mountain specifically for the guest who wants the North Shore's complete cultural and wilderness combination within reach of a single base camp. Twenty semi-primitive sites on Devil Track Lake—most with electric and water hookups for RV camping in the wooded North Shore setting, plus a dump station for full RV management, and pit toilet facilities—serve the campground's season from Memorial Day weekend through mid-September. The natural lakeside setting, the second-growth birch and aspen of the Superior National Forest surrounding the lake, and the clean Lake Superior watershed water quality that Cook County's undeveloped drainage maintains in Devil Track Lake provide the camping environment that the Arrowhead region's summer visitors specifically seek in the Superior National Forest's lake-dotted interior. Grand Marais—ten minutes from the campground—is the artistic and cultural center of Minnesota's North Shore, anchored by the Grand Marais Art Colony established in 1947 as one of the oldest continuously operating art colonies in the United States. The colony's summer workshops in painting, printmaking, and sculpture attract artists nationally to the coastal setting that Lake Superior's scale and the North Shore's basalt geology create for the visual arts. The North House Folk School—Grand Marais's immersive traditional craft school—offers multi-day courses in wooden boat building, blacksmithing, weaving, and the northern traditional crafts that the Scandinavian and Native American cultural heritage of the Lake Superior North Shore historically produced. The Gunflint Trail begins in Grand Marais and travels 57 miles to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness access points at the Minnesota-Ontario border, providing the single most direct route into the BWCA's interior lake canoe country from any North Shore community. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness—the most visited wilderness in the United States by annual permit holders—encompasses over one million acres of lake-and-portage canoe country in the Superior National Forest, providing the self-propelled wilderness travel experience that the Minnesota DNR and the U.S. Forest Service jointly manage through the permit system that regulates daily entry to protect the ecological quality of the BWCA's 1,175 lakes and 1,000-plus miles of canoe routes. Pine Mountain Campground is open seasonally from Memorial Day weekend through mid-September in the North Shore's short but intensely beautiful camping season. The summer outdoor recreation and arts season peaks from late June through August; fall color in early October extends the appeal if the campground is still operating. Reserve the electric site early for summer, visit the North House Folk School, and let Devil Track Lake and the Grand Marais harbor earn the North Shore experience that Minnesota's northeastern corner preserves in its most genuinely wild and culturally rich form.