The US Geological Survey keeps a grand list of the names of places in the United States. If you search that list for the word “portage,” you’ll find a large number of them in the upper Midwest. A look at a map explains the pattern. Across Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota there is a drainage divide south of which rivers flow into the Mississippi and to the Gulf of Mexico, north of which they flow into the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. But there is no mountain range dividing the headwaters of these two drainages. Often there is not even a rise of land that can be observed without the aid of laser altimeters. One of those places is Portage, Wisconsin, where the walk from the Fox River, which flows north to Lake Michigan, and the Wisconsin, which feeds the Mississippi, is an easy stroll across flat land and through small-town streets.

The portage at Portage served as a carrying place for canoe travelers long before there was industrial commerce in the Midwest. Then, at the height of the steamboat craze, a canal was dug across the flats between the two rivers and, for a few years, powered boats used it to travel from the Mississippi valley to the Great Lakes. But the canal and the Fox River were small and the Wisconsin was shallow, so commerce was never particularly profitable. Then the growth of railroads provided faster and cheaper commerce throughout the Midwest and the maintenance of the canal was eventually abandoned.

Today the portage is a very pleasant walk, and would be a relatively easy path along which to carry a canoe. You can park where Highway 33 crosses the Fox River just outside of town and walk toward the Wisconsin River, or start in downtown Portage, where the canal used to connect to the Wisconsin River and walk toward the Fox. Sadly, the canal no longer connects to the Wisconsin River, so it’s not possible to make the trip by water.