The
Saint Louis River (abbreviated
St. Louis River) is a river in the U.S. states of
Minnesota and
Wisconsin that flows into
Lake Superior. The largest U.S. river to flow into the lake, it is in
length and starts east of
Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota. The river's
watershed covers . Near the Twin Ports of
Duluth, Minnesota and
Superior, Wisconsin, the river becomes a freshwater
estuary. According to
Warren Upham, the
Ojibwe name of the river is
Gichigami-ziibi (Great-lake River). He notes:
"The river was probably so named by Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye (1685–1749), who was a very active explorer, in the years 1731 and onward, of the vast country from Pigeon River and Rainy Lake to the Saskatchewan and Missouri Rivers, establishing trading posts and missions. The king of France in 1749, shortly before the death of La Vérendrye, conferred on him the cross of Saint Louis as a recognition of the importance of his discoveries, and thence the name of the Saint Louis River appears to have come. On Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin's map (1688) and Philippe Buache's map (1754), it is called the Rivière du Fond du Lac, and the map by Gilles Robert de Vaugondy (1755) and Jonathan Carver's map (1778) are the earliest to give the present name."