St. Croix River

Mary, 2 of her friends, and I enjoyed a Stillwater Riverboat Jazz Dinner cruise on the St. Croix River experiencing the beauty of the scenic St. Croix River.

The St. Croix River (French: Holy Cross) is a tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately 169 miles in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The lower 125 miles of the river form the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota. The river is a National Scenic Riverway under the protection of the National Park Service.

The river is the result of geologic forces going back 1.1 billion years. At that time, the Mid-Continent Rift rendered the middle of North America apart, creating a volcanic zone. The lava spewed forth cooled into hard basalt. That basalt is what today creates the dramatic cliffs around the Interstate State Parks. About 500 million years ago, a shallow sea covered the area, laying down layers of sand and minerals that make up much of the sandstone bluffs now seen along the river. In the last 20,000 years, glaciers have scraped the landscape and released torrents of meltwater, which carved the St. Croix River’s course.