Constantly changing yet always profoundly affecting life within its watershed, the Mississippi River has figured countless times in the history of the United States. Often called the Father of Waters, it traverses nearly the entire width of the country and, in water volume, is the largest river in the United States and the seventh largest in the world. The river winds 2,470 miles from its source at Itasca State Park to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico, with 660 river miles in Minnesota; Crow Wing State Park lies 320 miles from the source and 2,150 miles from the mouth. For centuries American Indians relied on the river as a vital life source, with villages along its shores and travel and trade linking local populations across half the continent. Many of the first European explorations into the North American interior followed the Mississippi, which still bears the name given by the Ojibwe, also known as Chippewa, in the upper Mississippi valley: Missi meaning great or large, and sippi meaning river in the Algonkian dialect spoken by the Ojibwe. In the 1800s steamboats carried passengers and cargo up and down the Mississippi River, Crow Wing marked the northern limit of that travel, and the river also carried logs from pine forests near Crow Wing to lumber mills downstream.