Jim and Val on the Road: 6/30 - Red Lake Falls, Day 3

Met with the Catholic church’s archivist today to find where our two missing graves are. Turns out both are unmarked although the records do show where they are. One was moved from another cemetery and the 1887 marker might not have survived the move. The other is a real puzzle though. Every LaTendresse left in Red Lake Falls after the rest of the family moved to Yakima, WA, is in the same area, all lined up like peas in a pod……except the missing one who is buried some distance away in an unmarked grave. Why? Family feud? We may never be able to find out, but it sure is curious.

The archivist had some interesting stories to tell about the left-overs from Prohibition days. Her foster son was on the road crew building the main highway through town several decades ago. They got to an area near the center of the main town block and the concrete they were laying wouldn’t go down right. One of the crew said he’d find out what the problem was and he started digging. He hit a solid steel enclosed room under the middle of the street. It was all lined with wooden panels. They surmised it was where Kaiser Savard hid the liquor he was running. Kaiser (his nickname, not real given name) would make runs to Chicago where he had ties to Al Capone and bring the liquor to RLF for distribution. (Red Lake Falls used to be nicknamed Red Liquor Falls.) Another colorful character here (long gone, unfortunately) was running from the feds with a car full of liquor. He hid out for four days in his car underneath a large grain elevator just outside town. The feds knew he was in the area but could never find him. Kaiser’s illicit liquor business kept this area going during the tough Prohibition years when all the farms would have gone under had it not been for the booming liquor business. They were all growing corn for whiskey-making before Prohibition and were able to continue growing it because of Kaiser and the other bootleggers who stayed in operation. I hope to find out more about this tomorrow when we meet with a couple of the town’s oldest residents.

This afternoon we went to Thief River Falls (20 miles north) to visit the Arctic Cat factory. The tour was very interesting even though the production line had been shut down for the day. They’d had a problem with the oven that bakes the powder-coat paint on and didn’t want employees there with nothing to do so sent them home for the day. While it was disappointing not to see the lines in operation we were able to hear the tour guide much better without all the noise. Arctic Cat has 1630 employees at that location which is huge for this area. A lot of their employees drive over from RLF to work. We were very impressed with the way they build their products and the innovations they’ve come up with. Wish we could try out the snowmobiles but we don’t want to be here in the winter to do it!