Name: Mississippi River Headwaters
Address: Pinewood, MN 56676, Pinewood

At a glance

Rating breakdown

5 ★90%
4 ★9%
3 ★1%
2 ★0%
1 ★0%

Pinewood, MN 56676

Photos of Mississippi River Headwaters (44)

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Mississippi River Headwaters, Pinewood – photo 1

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Mississippi River Headwaters, Pinewood – photo 12

Quick facts

What is the rating of Mississippi River Headwaters?: Mississippi River Headwaters is rated 4.9 out of 5 based on 1,392 reviews.
Where is Mississippi River Headwaters located?: Pinewood, MN 56676

Reviews (8)

Shamus Jackfoot 2024 Jul 09

Beautiful place. It's a must see for everyone. We even saw a bear on the way

Joyce Fort 2024 Jul 07

Definitely a good idea to buy a park pass prior to getting there, but if you don't....you don't have to sit at the entrance and try to do so, you can buy one at the gift shop.

Linda Suskie 2024 Jul 06

Very cool to see the headwaters of the Mississippi River start as a creek flowing out of Lake Itasca. Quite a few people visiting here in late June. In the 1930s stones were added so you can walk across. When we visited, the water was high, the rocks slippery, and those walking across got wet. Note that some creeks flow into Lake Itasca, and some argue that one of them should be considered the Mississippi River headwaters (and at least one is so marked on Google Maps), but these are the generally accepted headwaters and certainly the most fun.

John Patrick 2024 Jul 06

Great trails, great amenities, make sure you know there are not water hookups before you come to camp! Great water access as well.

Lance Melbye 2024 Jul 05

Was late, and I didn't have a lot of time to walk around and check everything out the way I would have liked. Parked near the head waters and walked in. Was very cool to see where the mighty Mississippi starts!!! Lots of information about the head waters history!!! Even said that there were people camping out here as long as 5,000 years ago! With copper even which is cool to know that they were mining copper from the north shore that long ago and it got that far inland is really cool! The history is amazing and fun to learn!

T DeWitt 2024 Jun 19

This was my second time here, the first being 28 years ago in 1996. I don't remember there being so much to the place. There's a gift shop, ice cream parlor, educational displays, and a very well maintained trail down to the headwaters. You can either walk across the river in knee deep water, or walk across on rocks they have placed where the river exits the lake.

Paul Luoma 2024 May 20

Always a beautiful time at the headwaters.
Been there many times first time camping.. great time was had by all.

Double Decker Fam 2024 Jan 17

We had no idea what to expect here, or if we’d even be able to fit our motorhome into the parking lot. Fortunately, they had plenty of parking and have motorhome parking as well which was super helpful. Our bus is 44’ long and we tow the van behind so in total we needed around 67’ of parking which was not an issue.

We also didn’t do any research before arriving so had no idea if we would be getting in the water or not, in fact we told the kids not to get in the water, but after walking the short walk down the trail there was no keeping anyone out of the water.

We went in June and there were a good amount of other people there, but it didn’t feel crowded. We enjoyed all the signage and of course splashing in the water was a ton of fun!!

The gift shop was well stocked and had plenty of good souvenirs for the whole family. There are also a lot of educational signage that we really enjoyed.

We highly recommend stopping here on any road trip going near.