Yesterday (Friday) we got ourselves in gear and headed over to the museum in Cass Lake, 30 miles from the campground. I wanted to see what Cass Lake was like in the period from 1898 to 1910 when my father's uncle and aunt lived there. They married in 1898, the year the Great Northern Railroad was built across northern Minnesota with a depot at the town of Cass Lake. Uncle H.D. no doubt saw a good business opportunity for a 24-year-old who didn't want to become a farmer like his father. He became the Indian agent in Cass Lake and opened a general store. Since Cass Lake is the central point for several reservations, he was probably very busy.
Cass Lake street, a block back from the railroad in 1898 when the railroad arrived
The town grew to over 1,500 people after this with lots of stores and services and nice buildings, but I can't imagine moving to this from a well-established town as an 18-year-old bride. Aunt Lydia was a brave young woman.
Cass Lake's Great Northern depot in 1906
Cass Lake Museum in the Soo Line Depot today
The museum is located in one of only three remaining original Soo Line depots in Minnesota. The tracks used to run right in front of it, of course, but they were taken up within the last 20 years so the main highway could be straightened and improved.
The economy here revolved around the logging industry as it did throughout the whole area. Lyle Chisholm, a local man who had been a logger all of his life, built a replica logging camp across the street from the railroad depot where the museum is now located. He wanted to show people what real logging camps were like so everything is exactly right. Both the logging camp and the museum were extremely interesting.
Lyle built everything himself and did a wonderful job. He had plans for one additional building but, before he could get it started, he and his daughter were killed in a car accident within a block of the museum. He was 87 and perhaps didn't see too well because he pulled out on the main highway in front of a big truck.
Can you imagine having a team of horses pull a load like this? This is how logs were moved but normal loads weren't this big. This particular load, at Pine Island, MN, in 1909, set a record: 50,580 board feet, 250 tons, 9 rail car loads, for 15 miles pulled by six horses. If logs couldn't be rolled or dragged into a river, they could only be moved in winter when the roads could be iced. Heavy water tanks were built on sleighs to keep the ruts iced so the massive loads could pass over them.
Lumber barons stripped the northern forests by the early 1900's. Destruction wrought by their greed and shortsightedness is still taking its toll today in many ways, especially in the Great Lakes fishing industry. When the lumber industry collapsed many people were put out of work and towns declined or disappeared. Much of my extended Minnesota family moved to Yakima, Washington, to work for Boise Cascade. As Uncle H.D.'s customers left, he also moved to Yakima where he opened another general store which kept going for decades.
After finishing at the museum and eating a very good lunch of walleye fingers at the Stony Point Resort, we went back to Bemidji to find Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, characters from American folklore. These statues have been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1988 and, according to the Kodak Company, are "the second most photographed statues in the United States, behind only Mount Rushmore."
Paul Bunyan and Babe are impressively large
The statues were originally part of a winter festival put on by the town of Bemidji in 1937 in an effort to stimulate tourism during the Depression. They now reside at the Bemidji visitors center and are still drawing tourists.
Lake Bemidji from the visitors center
The Mississippi River runs through Lake Bemidji. The city of Bemidji advertises itself as the "First City on the Mississippi."
We ran out of time and energy and never made it to the Beltrami County Museum. The Cass Lake Museum had so much information we probably didn't miss anything.
Today (Saturday) the only place we went was the picnic area and canoe launch for LaSalle Lake Recreation Area which is about a mile drive from the campground.
LaSalle Lake fishing dock
LaSalle Lake is only 1.5 miles long. There's a 10 mph speed limit on it which discourages boats of any size. Besides that, the boat launch area is unsuitable for anything larger than a canoe or kayak. A few people were out in power boats but they were small ones. It's a very peaceful place but there's no place to sit other than on the dock itself which had two families fishing off it. This recreation area is a rather strange set-up.....campground too far from the lake to walk to comfortably, an inadequate and inconvenient boat launch ramp, and the picnic pavilion way up hill from the lake (and a mile from the campground).
Tomorrow we're moving to Red Lake Falls which is only 80 miles away.
No comments:
Post a Comment