Palisade Head

Palisade Head is a large rock formation on the North Shore of Lake Superior in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is within Tettegouche State Park but not contiguous with the rest of that park. Palisade Head is located at milepost 57 on scenic Minnesota State Highway 61 in Beaver Bay Township, Lake County, approximately 54 miles northeast of Duluth and three miles northeast of Silver Bay.

Palisade Head is formed from a rhyolitic lava flow which was extruded some 1.1 billion years ago. During the Mesoproterozoic era of the Precambrian eon, the continent spread apart on the Midcontinent Rift System extending from what is now eastern Lake Superior through Duluth to Kansas; this rifting process stopped before an ocean developed. A flow some 200 feet thick formed extremely hard volcanic rock which resisted a billion years of erosion which cut down surrounding formations. This formed both Palisade Head and Shovel Point, which is within the main part of Tettegouche State Park about two miles to the east. The feature is a shallow headland, with Lake Superior to the southwest, southeast, and northeast. Its high point is over 300 feet above the level of the lake; the lakeside cliffs stand up to several hundred feet above water level.

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