"Not even eaten at all."

This bit of news from the Duluth News Tribune on February 10, 1898 sure was a relief to read. We're headed up to Ely over the holidays and would have hated to come across Mr. Cameron's remains.

Book review: A View of the Lake

For every 100 people who dream of leaving the big city (or the big suburbs) behind and moving to the North Shore, one or two people actually do it. That ratio has brought enough people to populate the North Shore with quite a cast of characters who have chosen to make this rough land their home.

In A View of the Lake, Beryl Singleton Bissell chronicles the leap of faith she and her husband Bill took in 1999 when they landed in quiet Schroeder, Minnesota, surprised owners of a run-down home they bought only for the view of Lake Superior.

Beryl and Bill immersed themselves in the community right away. I first met them when they were about four years into their new North Shore lives and Beryl was already busy and respected. In this book, Beryl shares how their community connections gradually unfolded.

Contemplating this transition into the North Shore community, Beryl writes, "What was it, I wondered, that brought a sense of belonging to place? ... Was it something we can make happen, or was it more tenuous, a gift?"

Belonging to the North Shore comes to them through neighborly interactions at the Schroeder Post Office, repeated hikes on their closest stretch of the Superior Hiking Trail, quiet writing retreats and epic adventures. I have a bit part in the book myself, as the guy who led them out onto the ice of Lake Superior.

If you've ever considered making a move like this, to the North Shore or Montana or Manhattan, this book is an important read. It reminded me of Rick Bass' Winter: Notes from Montana. In fact, Bissell's book would be strengthened with more of the chronological, narrative style of Bass' Winter. Bissell's short chapters are easy to read, but they keep the reader distant from the truly interesting underlying storylines.

The couple's move to the North Shore became complete when they purchased a family grave plot at the Schroeder cemetery (for the resident price of four dollars). It was final evidence of their determination "to make this our home 'till death do us part." The North Shore and its fans are better off now with these new "locals."

A bit more about the Western Waterfront Trail

In my post yesterday, I neglected to mention Indian Point campground (or "campgrounds," as the sign at the entrance reads). The Western Waterfront Trail curves around Indian Point, and the campground is very visible.Indian Point has a lot of Duluth history to it.  It was the equivalent of today's Bayfront Park, with picnics and musical performances. 

However, this one historical reference made my skin crawl a bit:


"A distinctive feature of this camp site is its bathing beach on upper St. Louis bay where autoists, dusty from the day's travel, may indulge in a refreshing dip."
(Duluth News-Tribune, May 22, 1921)

Since the 1920s, the waters of the St. Louis have turned a bit less refreshing. Fortunately, drivers don't get quite as dusty, either, what with roofs on cars now.

Minnesota North Shore now "Northwest"

In a ceremony held today at the Minnesota-Ontario border at the Pigeon River, Minnesota and Ontario officials formally signed off on the historic "Real North Shore" treaty, which designates the Ontario shore of Lake Superior as "The North Shore" and the Minnesota shore as "The Northwest Shore."

Officials cited the geographic reality that has been ignored for a long time. The Minnesota shore of Lake Superior really is on the northwest side of the lake. "This historic moment will finally clear up centuries of confusion," said David Thompson, Jr. "Minnesotans never knew if they went north or east to Grand Marais. Now they'll do both."

Secretary of State Danielle Webster agreed that the move will solve long-standing confusion. "Anyone who has been past Thunder Bay knows that the true rugged and wild North Shore starts around Nipigon."

Representatives of Minnesota businesses have expressed concern about the plan. Explore Minnesota's Alex Ashburton said that over forty tourism-related businesses now called "North Shore" will either have to relocate to Ontario or change their names. Tofte's only grocery store and liquor, formerly known as North Shore Market, has already changed their name to "Northwest Nibbles and Nips."

In a related legal process, Hawaii's North Shore surfing area, the North Shore neighborhoods of greater Chicago and Boston, and Vancouver, BC's North Shore ski region are pursuing a class action lawsuit seeking to overturn the agreement. 

Ski joke: Why ski trails are measured in kilometers

The world needs more ski jokes; here's my attempt to provide something new:

The top ten reasons ski trails are measured in meters and kilometers, not feet and miles

1. When the woods are lovely, dark and deep, skiers would rather not have miles to go before they sleep
2. Skiers’ feet are stinky
3. C’mon, would you rather ski 30 miles or 30K?
4. Three words: One World Government
5. “5 K” sounds way cooler than “3.2 M”
6. That’s how they measure distance in Finland and Norway...and all the rest of the industrialized world
7. Chicks dig “clicks”
8. Gives the Italian, Swedish and Norwegian skiers homefield advantage wherever they compete
9. “Short” and “long” were already taken
10. Since ski wax temperatures are in Celsius, it’s easier to make the conversion

Back to the Seventies on the Piedmont ski trail

Duluth's popular Piedmont ski trail is more than classic cross country skiing at its best...it's a pun-ridden pop culture history lesson, firmly rooted in the 1970s. My teenage sons have no idea what they're missing, and I sound pretty lame as I try to explain.

So at a soft turn in the trail, there's the hand-lettered sign "Gentle Bend." Who remembers the tame black bear sitting in the bow of the airboat skimming through the Everglades? Sure "Gentle Ben" was broadcast in the late 1960s, but must have run as afternoon reruns in the 1970s. I can't pass that sign without the theme song popping in my head...or was that the Mayberry RFD theme?

At least two more early 70s TV shows pop up in puns on Piedmont. What do you feel like the first few times you go skiing each year? A little sore like Eva Gabor would after she climbed the telephone pole to make a call?

When the trail runs through an open marshy area and tall grasses creep up to the trail, go back to another 1970s TV show, "Kung Fu." How often have you done your best imitation of Master Po telling David Carradine, "When you can take this pebble from my hand, Grasshopper..."?

Two more signs are tributes to 1969, on the cusp of the 1970s. One is at the top of a wonderful long straight downhill that lets you glide through the forest like on the seat of a stars-and-striped motorcycle. Another is right at the bottom of another long hill, perfectly placed where most skiers come to rest after a long descent.

But my new favorite sign, perched right at the crest of a big dip in the trail, the one that got all these 1970s remembrances going this afternoon, took me right back to the era of Farrah hair, Lip Smackers and ski sweaters:

Just how many folks out there really remember Dippity Do? 

The 1970s were the years that nordic skiing really got going in Minnesota. Do you suppose all those Finns who built the trails were actually inspired by bad TV to get outside and do something righteous?

Etienne Brule, Superior's wild man

For a quick and dirty biography of the guy who "discovered" Lake Superior, check out this link from a Canadian historian. We mostly know Etienne Brule from the lovely rivers named after him: the Brule River in Judge Magney State Park (which disappears into the Devil's Kettle), and the Brule River east of Superior, where there is great canoeing and trout fishing.


 Brule's journey to Lake Superior led all over the eastern seaboard, including the Ohio and Potomac rivers. Brule went totally wild, adopting the dress and language of the Hurons. He could not be kept under the control of Champlain. It turns out Brule was a renegade, and, eventually, the victim of cannibals.

Enjoy the quick read.

A John Beargrease Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving week, 1896. The North Shore. John Beargrease and his boss, the postmaster of Beaver Bay, take off up the North Shore, in their rowboat.

It's November, right? A storm blows in. So strong that the postmaster Wegner and Beargrease can't return to shore. To keep their boat afloat, and to keep themselves from hypothermia, all they can do is row. Against the wind and the waves.

It's a three-day blow, like usual. So they row, taking turns, for three days. One man rows, the other huddles under a blanket.

As the storm lets up on Thanksgiving day, finally they make it to shore. At the mouth of the Baptism River in today's Tettegouche State Park. 40 hours of rowing. Seven miles.

The reporter from the Duluth News-Tribune reflected, “It was an experience only the sturdiest of men could survive, and that they did not freeze is undoubtably due to their exertions at the oar.”

Think your Thanksgiving travels were rough?

The North Shore comes to the Mall of America

In the latest business news:

MOA adds Betty’s Pies to menu. Betty’s Pies, a popular tourist destination at Two Harbors along the north shore of Lake Superior, plans to open a 4,300-square-foot pie, pastry and restaurant shop at the Mall of America. The approximately $1 million restaurant is scheduled to open in February, said Marti Sieber, co-owner of Betty’s Pies with business partner Carl Ehlenz.

Okay, what's next? Will Lake Superior Trading Post open a moccasin-and-book store in Southdale? Will the Vanilla Bean start serving their omelets from a food cart on Nicollet Mall?

A North Shore mother looks to sea

The newspapers only knew her as “Mrs. Olson” of Two Harbors. Though her name may have been common, her suffering at the hands of Lake Superior was poignant and rare.

Her men were fishermen, and even before coming to the United States she had lost her husband, drowned off the coast of Sweden. One of her sons, John had drowned April 1910 in Grand Marais on his way to Isle Royale.

Now, in April 1911 her other son, Otto, was off to Isle Royale in the same boat. And there was no word from him; he was missing off the North Shore.



In the 1900s and early 1910s on the North Shore, information only traveled as fast as the boat, dogsled or runner bearing the letter. Telephone lines weren't in yet between Duluth, Two Harbors and Grand Marais. The Booth Line’s steamer Easton was the main link North Shore communities had with each other and with the world. Imagine Mrs. Olson waiting for news of her son.

One can only imagine Mrs. Olson’s dread as days stretched into weeks without word. Radios were only recently introduced to Lake Superior’s larger ships, and smaller boats seldom had them. The steamer Easton had made two of its regular trips between Duluth and Isle Royale to collect the fish from the dozens of Island fishermen, and had seen no sign of the Olson party.

On April 14, 1911 the Duluth News-Tribune ran the headline “FISHERMEN ARE PROBABLY LOST ON NORTHSHORE.” The article explains that since the time the party left Grand Marais, “a strong wind has been blowing almost continuously from the northeast, and is considered by old sailors here more than probable that the small launch has been swamped and all aboard perished.”

But April 14 was also the day the Easton returned to Two Harbors from Isle Royale on its next trip, with news and mail from the island in addition to its load of fish.

The Easton carried a letter written a few days before by her son Otto. After leaving Grand Marais, the crew had stopped at Grand Portage and then reached the Susie Islands. The wind was so strong that they dared not make the fifteen-mile crossing to Isle Royale. They had “held” at Susie Island for four nights, waiting for the wind to drop.

Mrs. Olson: wife and mother of men who fish.

Although Mrs. Olson was no doubt very happy that day, I wish a much MUCH happier Mother's Day to all this year!

All those waterfalls, going to waste

I came across this image from a 1913 edition of the Duluth News Tribune today. Note the incredible caption, about this beautiful waterfalls and its 75,000 horsepower "going to waste."

The relevant part of the article reads:

"Within the very lap of Tofte there is 125,000 electrical horse power undeveloped. Temperance River Falls, three miles west, that has 75,000 horsepower, owned by Fletcher Brothers of Minneapolis, who signify an intention of developing it for operating pulp mills and for furnishing electrical lighting for Tofte. Then there are the Cascade Falls just east of Tofte that has 50,000 horsepower going to waste. Both of these falls should be harnassed and made to do their share in the work of developing the natural resources of this section of Cook county. With the dawn of the railroad era the Duluth & Northern Minnesota, that cuts through the center of the county and the building of the new line, Grand Marais & Northwestern, tapping the forest wealth, iron ranges and the rich leaf mould agricultural soil tributary to the north shore, we doubt not but what both of these water falls will be put into commission in the very near future."

Imagine a narrow reservoir with a tall plug of a dam right where we look into Temperance's Hidden Falls today. Imagine a major industrial site right where the Temperance campground is now, still cranking out paper. Really, imagine the Ontario town of Terrace Bay and its dam on the Aguasabon River. I like Terrace Bay. A very nice dentist there helped me get past a really bad toothache once. But I like Temperance as it is even more.

The Grand Marais & Northwestern Railroad never came to be. Five years after this article was published, the Duluth and Northern Minnesota railroad announced in the same paper it was pulling up miles of its track in Cook County. The "forest wealth" had already been tapped. The pulp business consolidated in other places, and the local pulpwood that would have been pounded with the power of the Temperance went by raft across the lake.

Rather than a dam at Temperance, the CCC built stone overlooks. In 1957, the state park was created.

Those waterfalls at Temperance aren't wasted. They add value to our lives everytime we see or even think of them.

Grand Portage: "I'd rather be here than anywhere."

Grand Portage National Monument just announced some great news for North Shore explorers. Entrance to the national monument is now free. It wasn't expensive before...$3 per person, $6 per family. Park Superintendent Tim Cochrane said in a news release, " In these tough economic times, it made little sense to charge fees that kept visitors from coming." That gets you into the reconstructed fort and into the cool new heritage center.

So plan this summer to head to the far end of the Minnesota North Shore and experience some history. Haul a pack of furs at the voyageur encampment. Try your hand (or bloody your fingers) at grinding corn. Hike the Grand Portage itself.



And then take the few bucks you would have spent on entry and drop them into the donation box. It's all for a good cause.

The best things in life sometimes really are free.

Minnesotans! Get yer island back!

True or false? Isle Royale was mined by ancient Indians for copper, but ever since has been an uninhabited wilderness. True or false? Isle Royale belongs to Michigan because of its deep historic and prehistoric connections.

Both are false. And that should be good for Minnesotans’ cultural pride.

I read Timothy Cochrane’s new book this summer, and really enjoyed his revisitation of Lake Superior and North Shore history. Cochrane systematically dismantles much of the “common knowledge” about Isle Royale. Minong—The Good Place documents the deep spiritual, economic and cultural connections between the North Shore Ojibwe and Isle Royale.

Until nearly the end of the nineteenth century, Ojibwe from Grand Portage and Fort William not only lived on the Island, they fished, hunted and died there too. Traditional Ojibwe stories are rife with mentions of the Island. Yet the island, we learn, was bought from the Lake Superior Ojibwe with $500 of gunpowder and beef.

This book provides the historical basis for restoring North Shore Ojibwe relations to Isle Royale. In fact, Cochrane ends the book with a few specific proposals that would strengthen connections between the Grand Portage community and the National Park. Perhaps, Cochrane suggests, Grand Portage Ojibwe could restore their historic connection with Isle Royale, and generate much-needed income, by building and running a hotel at the western tip of Isle Royale.

This book is an important contribution to Minnesota history as well. Although Minnesotans just celebrated the state’s sesquicentennial, the earliest European settlements in the state go much further back than 150 years, including the vibrant community of Grand Portage. Cochrane shows how Grand Portage can lay claim to Isle Royale. By extension, Minnesotans can claim Isle Royale too, to the extent that they embrace Grand Portage.

If you’re looking for a light read to put in your Isle Royale backpack, this is not the book for you. It’s academic in tone, with almost a third of the book comprised of footnotes and bibliography. Despite the title, it’s as much about Grand Portage as it is about Isle Royale. Relying on primary sources to tell such an important story makes reading feel a bit like bushwacking through thick underbrush instead of following the easy trail. But if you’re interested in the history of Lake Superior, this is an essential book to read and understand.

Minong—The Good Place: Ojibwe and Isle Royale, Timothy Cochrane, 2009, Michigan State University Presss, East Lansing, 300 pages

The CCC had to PPP

There's a hiking trail at Gooseberry Falls State Park that you probably have not hiked before. To walk the park's "Gitchi Gummi" trail is to follow in the footsteps of gallant men...right into their private ablutions.

The Gitchi Gummi Trail makes a two-mile loop hike on the east side of the Goosberry River, tucked between Highway 61 and dramatic 100-foot cliffs on Lake Superior. You leave from the main visitor center, following the crowds toward the river and the falls. But you leave the crowds behind as soon as you cross the river, on a footbridge suspended under the highway bridge.

The work of the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, is everywhere on this trail. You'll pass a statue of a CCC worker, a handsome strapping young man in bronze. On the Gitchi Gummi Trail, you'll find stone walls that make up the hiking trail's switchbacks. I'd never seen trail work as substantial as this:



Imagine those CCC workers building their way through this trail. First these stone U-turns. Then the shelter overlooking the mouth of the Gooseberry River. But before those young men built any of those, they built this one:



The only CCC-built outhouse still in existence, right off the Gitchi Gummi Trail. Now that just made my day.

The sign inside the door says, in a poor attempt to rhyme:

"If you have the urge to pee
Don't do it here, this is part of history."

It's a nice hike, just under a mile, with great views of the Gooseberry River, big broad Lake Superior, and the gurgling waters of Nelson's Creek. Just thinking of those gurgling waters makes me have to go.

What's old is new again

Grand Portage is one of the oldest settlements in Minnesota, with Ojibway people living there for at least 500 years and a fascinating blend of European and native cultures since the 1700s. Visitors this summer will enjoy some new and meaningful ways to experience this history.

The National Monument has totally reoriented their entrance. The old parking lot on the northeast side of the stockade is blocked off and is regrowing native vegetation. The new entrance is on the west side of the stockade, and goes through the new heritage center.

The new Heritage Center at Grand Portage appears to be a tremendous new interpretive resource. I say "appears to be," because after a brutal hike to Mt. Josephine, we lost our energy to explore the facility. But I could see into the exhibit area and it looked terrific. You do have to pay the Monument entry fee to take in the exhibits.

One super cool new option this summer is a guided tour of the Spirit Little Cedar Tree, or "Witch Tree." Access to this North Shore landmark has been tightly controlled by the band and the community. Now, every Saturday and Sunday, you can sign up for a free 3:00 tour. Sign up by 2:30 at the Heritage Center. I recommend doing it now, before the program gets changed.

Go next weekend (August 8-10) for the annual Rendezvous Days. This is a combination of Grand Portage's annual Pow Wow and a big fur trade encampment at the Monument grounds.