Significant in the long record of human experience in the upper Great Lakes environment, Wisconsin waterways contributed vitally to Indian life, to the success of the French explorers and missionaries, to the feasibility of the multi-million dollar fur trade, to the empire building fortunes of France, Britain, and the United States, and to the progress of frontier settlement and development in the 19th century. In uncounted ways the lakes and rivers served the agricultural and manufacturing development of the late 19th century, which in turn, laid the ground work for Wisconsin's economic diversity in the 20th century.