 The forest cover consists largely of balsam fir and varieties of spruce; eastern white pine, red pine, quaking aspen, paper birch, and northern white cedar are also common in the area.The Misquahs are part in the Laurentian Mixed Forest Province, a transition zone between boreal forest to the north and broadleaf forests to the south.The Misquah Hills were surveyed by Newton H. Winchell, Minnesota state geologist, and Ulysses S. Grant II in the 1890s, who, using an aneroid barometer mistakenly gave the title of highest peak in Minnesota to an unnamed 2230-foot summit near what is now called Winchell Lake.