cliffs over which the river flows. Below the falls, the river cuts a large channel through mostly clay. To the northeast, a large basalt cliff rises 75 feet above lake level. To the southwest of the mouth is a lower cliff of only 10 feet, which was probably once attached to the high bluff before the river cut a channel between them. At the mouth, the flow of the river meets the opposing force of storms on the lake, kicking up a bar of red pebbles and chalcedony agates. Due to the lack of a headwater, the Gooseberry's flow comes nearly entirely from runoff. Accordingly, the flow is heaviest during the spring snow melt, and comparatively the river may run nearly dry during the summer. Ecology Gooseberry River is populated by brook, brown, and rainbow trout in the stretches above the barrier falls, and sees runs of steelhead in April and May. It is situated in a mixed evergreen, aspen, and birch forest with colonies of Arctic–alpine plants which enjoy Lake Superior's moderating effect on the local climate. Human use Gooseberry River appears on French maps as the Reviere des Groseilliers as early as the 1670s. The region remained largely undeveloped until the 1870s, when commercial fishers moved into the north shore region. Loggers followed in the 1890s. In July 1899, Colonel John H. Knight and former Senator of Wisconsin William Freeman Vilas, owners of the Superior Lumber Company, acquired for $1,000,000 land around the Gooseberry River estimated to contain four hundred million feet of standing pine. Logs felled from the forests around the Gooseberry were rafted to Knight and Vilas's lumber mills in Ashland, Wisconsin. One year later, these lands were acquired, along with Knight and Vilas's Ashland mill, by Thomas Nestor of the Nestor Logging Company for $1,250,000. The Nestor Logging Company set up its headquarters at the mouth of the Gooseberry, and built a logging railroad running inland to harvest the thick pine stands in the region. The railway was removed by 1908, but when the Virginia & Rainy Lake Company began logging further inland, the Nestor grade was once again used to build a spur line to connect the project with the Duluth & Northern Minnesota Railway. In the upper reaches of the watershed of the Gooseberry and its tributaries, communities began to grow on the Alger Line. One, London, was located where the Alger Line