The Voyageur Forest contains a shifting patchwork of boreal forest shaped by the landform, with pines on dry rocky ridge tops and shorelines, aspen and birch groves lower on glacial soils, and in moist valley bottoms black spruce bogs, ash swales, and beaver pond wetlands of alders and willows. This diversity has long characterized the area and was visible to voyageurs canoeing these waterways over 200 years ago. The forest today is younger because the huge white, red, and jack pines of the virgin forest were cut with handsaws between 1890 and 1930, and traces of that era remain in logging roads where teams of horses hauled logs to the water's edge. With time and the protection of a natural park, the majestic pines can grow again, the logging roads can disappear, and the boreal patchwork can return.