St. Croix Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix

CHAPTER 4:
Up North: The Development of Recreation in the St. Croix Valley (continued)

Recreation Along the Upper St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers

As the Lower St. Croix River adjusted to the decline in logging and its replacement by recreation, the Upper St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers experienced their own growth in tourism. In 1902, the tireless promoter of Burnett County, Ed Peet, was not just interested in attracting agricultural settlers, but he also extolled the county's potential for recreation. "Burnett is a county filled with lakes. . .nearly all of the lakes are filled with fine fish and into many of the lakes run swift little streams in which the speckled trout is found," he wrote. "The finest lake in the county, if not the finest in the state, is Yellow Lake. . .It is filled with fish of all kinds. . . Should a railroad ever touch Yellow lake there is no reason why it would not become one of the finest summer resorts in all the west." Peet also claimed that if the railroad ever reached Trade Lake it, too, "would be well patronized as a summer resort, as it contains many conditions that would attract people seeking rest and pleasure." [141]

Most of the first resort owners in the cutover had been loggers, guides, or farmers. Many farmers struggling in the cutover got into the resort business by simply allowing travelers to pitch a tent on their property or they took in boarders who were primarily interested in hunting or fishing. [142]

Many early hunting and fishing hostels dating back as early as the 1880s and 1890s were hotels and boarding houses in towns and stopping places along the roads used by transient lumbermen and teamsters. "Private rooms were available in the urban places," wrote local historian and resident, Eldon Marple, "but bunks were the rule of the country, rudimentary lodging at best. . .Few were the females who braved the rigors of resorting then." Even before Ed Peet began to sing the praises of the Upper St. Croix and Namekagon Rivers for recreation, a few locals began their own boosterism. In 1885, two Hayward residents advertised in the North Wisconsin News, proclaiming that, "Mr. J.N. Russell and Mr. Christie have for the past month been building a summer resort hotel out on Spider Lake." The resort was located east of Spider Creek near the present town hall site, which was a quarter mile from the lake. In 1894, Bill Cornick bought the hotel and called it a "Fisherman's Camp." By 1896, he built the first cottage on Spider Lake, and one on Lost Land Lake. [143] The Sawyer County plat book for 1897 ran advertisements for the Round Lake Park Place Summer Resort and Round Lake House Summer Resort, both located seven to eight miles east of Hayward. An advertisement for the Cable House, in the town of Cable, proclaimed it as a "Sportsmen's Paradise." A Hayward livery stable operator eagerly catered to the tourist trade by claiming, "I keep first class conveyances for transporting people to various Lake Resorts, such as Round Lake, Spider Lake, Lost Lake, Sand Lake, and Lac-Court Oreilles Lakes." [144]

In 1888, F.D. Stone, the county sheriff, opened his Jericho resort on Grindstone Lake, which he nicknamed the "seaport on Grindstone." Guests were entertained with a steamboat ride through the Grindstone-Court Oreilles — Whitefish chain of lakes. Although the Jericho apparently did good business, the resort burned down in 1891. However, in 1890 a ninety-room hotel was built in the town of Cable providing vacationers with another alternative, and the older Hotel Isted in town took in many excursionists. Another hotel was also completed the following year "at the old Crane Creek stopping place" by a man named Angus McPhee "Thad Thayer took in guests from the early days at Trading Post, as did Bill Hogue at his stopping place on the south end of Round Lake," related Eldon Marple. "John Berger operated the Eagles' Nest on Tyner Lake, and there were four fishing clubs on Lac Courte Oreilles: the Ashland, Hayden, Omaha and Chicago Club Houses." And in 1893, the old stopping place, Hotel Wright on Sand Lake, began taking in summer guests. [145]

Another example of the early resort beginnings is Boulder Lodge built on an old driving camp located on Ghost Creek. Jim Goodwins of Hayward started it as a fishing camp and stopping place and later turned it into a resort. It got its name from the big rock beside the road. William Cornick built cottages on Lost Lake in upper Sawyer County in May 1896. They, however, burned down in 1903. Cornick then built a lodge on Teal Lake. In 1921, the Ross family took it over and has operated it as Teal Lake Lodge. [146]

During the years of the First World War, railroads played an important role in the development of tourism in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 1916, the Chicago & NorthWestern Railway distributed a brochure entitled, Lakes and Resorts of the Northwest. "Hundreds of delightful lakes and resorts situated in Wisconsin," it beckoned, "are in a region where one may escape from the heat and dust of the city, where the nights are cool and restful, and days full of sunshine, and where there is an evenness in climactic conditions and a purity of atmosphere that cannot be surpassed." It added that there were "scores of fishing and hunting resorts, hidden away in the virgin forests of northern Wisconsin. . .where the lover of Nature may make camp amid innumerable lakes and streams, surrounded by forests, where the soft balsam of the pines pervades the air, where speckled trout are abundant in the streams, and black bass and muskellunge in the lakes." Cedar Lodge Resort, built on the east bay of Spider Lake in 1918 by Wes Turnbull, is an example of a vacation resort of this era, and Empire Lodge, located on Upper A and Empire road in Sawyer County, began in 1923 by Cliff Brandt. [147]

A night's ride in a Pullman car was all it took to deposit vacationers in the North Woods in time for breakfast. Included in the recommended towns with resorts were Hayward and Chisago City, Minnesota. The lakes of the Hayward area were "reached by beautiful drives through the heart of the pines." Round Lake was "an entrancing body of cold, clear water, fed by numerous streams." For the fishermen there were good trout streams, and for the hunter grouse, partridge, duck, and deer during hunting season. Chisago City was described as having excellent fishing, good duck hunting, and very attractive scenery. The brochure provided a list of hotels, lodges, and boarding houses along with their rates and distance from the station. [148]

Wisconsin and Minnesota were poised to take advantage of this growth in tourism and outdoor recreation. By 1920, the two states were leaders in the establishment of state parks, each having six, and the "Wisconsin Idea" of better government, in which a well-informed electorate worked in close cooperation with government agencies, had spread the spirit of reform throughout the country. In these two Midwestern states grassroots conservationists benefited from more responsive state governments. They got an additional boost from the National Park Service. In 1920, the director of the NPS, Stephen Mather called for a meeting with key state conservationists who could assist the federal government. Gems of the National Park Service, such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon, were becoming increasingly in danger of over use. In the era of growing demand by the public for recreational spaces, state parks could play a key role in providing additional parkland and diverting visitors from the National Parks. State parks, he believed, could protect natural areas that did not have national significance and could service local populations better. The 1921 National Conference on State Parks (NCSP) was described as "an epochal meeting." Two hundred representatives from twenty-five states met in Des Moines, Iowa, to discuss the importance of designating accessible natural and recreational areas. The NCSP was formally incorporated as a standing organization with the following mission:

To urge upon our governments, local, county, state, and national, the acquisition of additional land and water areas suitable for recreation, for the study of natural history and its scientific aspects, and the preservation of wild life [sic], as a form of the conservation of our national resources; until there shall be public parks, forests and preserves within easy access of all the citizens of every state and territory of the United States; and also to encourage the interest of non-governmental agencies and individuals in acquiring, maintaining and dedicating for public uses similar areas; and in educating the citizens of the United States in the values and uses of recreational areas.

The new organization's slogan became, "A State Park Every Hundred Miles." Between 1921 and 1927 seventeen states established state park boards or commissions with the authority to manage scenic and recreation areas that would come to include state monuments, beaches, lakeshores, parkways, waysides, and historical markers. Many partners, from state park superintendents to state departments of conservation to state comptrollers and local boosters came together in a concerted effort to preserve natural settings, market them for public consumption, and glean a bit of pride in sharing their part of the American scene. [149]

Vacationers also found the north woods more accessible in the post-war years as a network of paved roads were expanded and improved. In 1893, Congress established the Office of Road Inquiry as part of the Department of Agriculture. It was later named the Office of Public Road Inquiry (OPRI). Its mission was to improve rudimentary road design, materials, and construction techniques. By the turn of the century, OPRI's budget and staffing were increased, and more emphasis was put on improved transportation routes across the United States. In 1912, Congress established the "10% fund" that diverted ten percent of forest revenues to road construction. Four years later, the Federal Aid Road Act authorized $10 million for this purpose. A federal highway act was also passed in 1916 that required "states to establish highway departments in order that they might obtain, on a matching basis, federal subsidy for highway construction." An additional three million dollars came through the Post Office Appropriation Act of 1919, to ensure "rural free delivery" of mail to all households. By 1920, the OPRI was reorganized as a separate agency, called the Bureau of Public Roads. Its task was to provide technical assistance and direction for all future road construction. As early as 1902 the American Automobile Association (AAA) was promoting recreational auto-tourism. [150]

Roads in northern Wisconsin were also improved thanks to the growing popularity of the automobile. Between the two world wars state paved roads reached into the lower and upper St. Croix Valley. Road building was actually quite easy in the sandy soils of the cutover, and by the early 1930s the Upper St. Croix and Namekagon River area was "welded together by a road system which is very elaborate for such a little used area." The roads, however, were not well built or maintained, but this added to the rustic charm of this wilder region. [151]

The automobile did much to democratize recreation and tourism in America. Families with more modest incomes from Milwaukee and Chicago could now easily access the cooler breezes and refreshing lakes of northern Wisconsin. Civic boosters in both Minnesota and Wisconsin were quick to recognize the growing popularity of the automobile and the rising demand for family vacation destination and cultivated auto-tourism for its economic benefits. Both states and enterprising individuals billed their local communities as the best their respective state had to offer. In 1916, Minnesota formed the Ten Thousand Lakes Association to capitalize on its scores of lakes. The "Arrow Head Region" of Minnesota, in the northeast portion of the state, was touted as being the heart of fishing and hunting country. The Minnesota Arrowhead Association, comprised of member organizations from various local communities, established its headquarters in Duluth. Its purpose was to attract visitors, enlist new members, and to encourage preservation of the region's natural resources. The Arrowhead Country was advertised as "a wonderful unspoiled playground," and led the rest of the state in the tourism industry. During the 1920s members combined their efforts with those of local automobile clubs, the Minnesota Automobile Association, the AAA, local commercial clubs, and local chambers of commerce located throughout the state. The Minnesota Arrowhead Association and state automobile associations hosted exhibits at the annual state fair and sponsored annual "Scenic Minnesota Good Roads Tours," under the auspices of the United States Good Roads Association, Inc. to showcase the various regions of the state. In 1926, the group also attracted the attention of the Associated Press, which "spread the story of the Arrowhead Country throughout the nation." [152] By the early 1930s the state recognized how much money tourism generated and began a Tourist Bureau that later became a general department of business. In 1932, the Minnesota State Board of Health also began to distribute a booklet on State Laws and Regulations Relating to Hotels, Restaurants, and Places of Refreshment, Lodging Houses and Boarding Houses. This included resorts, summer camps, summer cottages, cabin camps and tourist camps. By the end of the decade Minnesota estimated it took in over a hundred million tourist dollars. [153]

Wisconsin was not to be outdone by its neighbor across the river. In 1921, in response to this new breed of vacationers, local businessmen across the North Woods organized the Northern Wisconsin Resort Association. Their goal was to entice vacationers northward with their dollars and to enhance services and improve the natural environment. Within a year two thousand businessmen from lumber companies, banks, automobile and oil companies, hotel and resort owners, and people from retail business joined in the effort to promote the "Wisconsin Land O' Lakes Association." The association, headquartered in Rhinelander, sent brochures, road maps, and travel information to cities outside the state, as well as established tourist bureaus in Milwaukee and Chicago. Although no statistics are available, the Land O' Lakes Association considered their 1923 campaign a resounding success. [154]

The promotion of the north woods for vacationers did stimulate local businesses. During the 1920s real estate developers, like the Homeseekers Land Company of Hayward, advertised Wisconsin's cut-over lands to residents in the Minneapolis and Chicago metropolitan areas as, "Desirable locations for Lake Summer Homes, Fur Farming, private trout ponds, club properties, etc." [155] The Baker Land and Title Company started to sell lake front lands for summer cottages. The Bakers subdivided, platted, and sold lots to people from the Twin Cities to Chicago and more distant places. [156] By 1931, grocery stores in Danbury, Gordon, and Solon Springs were doing a booming business catering to summer visitors. "Resort people from Eau Claire Lakes to the east and Bardon Lake to the southwest flock into Gordon daily during the summer season to get the mail and to shop," wrote an observer, "and this trade is the main support of the grocery stores, and is of importance to all the other business houses of the towns as well." [157] Struggling farmers in the cutover, who had not been able to form creameries due to low production, found the summer season a prime opportunity to sell their milk and cream to resorts. [158]

One poignant example of the transition from logging to elite tourism to the era of tourism of the masses is the Taylor House in Taylors Falls. In 1856, Joshua L. Taylor built a splendid Gothic revival house in his namesake town for his new bride. Although two Greek revival houses had previously been built in the town, the building of the Taylor house was symbolic. "The first rough era of the frontier was past, and. . .the foundation had been laid for a stable community." The Taylors, however, never had children and two years before his death, Mr. Taylor sold the house to Smith Ellison, who proceeded to put on an addition and turn the impressive home into a summer hotel. But after the First World War and into the 1920s the automobile transformed the character of tourism and tourists. Visitors now had more freedom and independence. The era of the town-based hotel was over as vacationers preferred to find their own little cottage or resort on a lake. The Taylor house hotel lost its clientele and eventually its building material was used for a motion picture theater. [159]

During the years between the First and Second World Wars, more summer homes and humble sportsmen's lodges began to dot the lakes and river in the St. Croix Valley, including Lake St. Croix, which had been shunned by tourists during the logging era. The Brule River, along which traversed Indians and traders of another era, was now a summer haven with beautiful seasonal homes. Its denizens enjoyed the trout in its waters and the forests with its game. In the cutover regions of Burnett, Washburn, and Sawyer Counties whose poorer soil defeated many a farmer, vacationers discovered sandy-bottomed lakes with clear, sparkling water, unlike the "pea soup" waters of neighboring counties south with their richer, heavier soils. An example of a sportsman's lodge that developed in the 1920s was Kilkare Lodge located between Birch Island Lake and Fish Lake in Burnett County. The Board of Governors, composed of businessmen from Chicago, "hand-picked" its members through mutual acquaintances ensuring there were "carefully selected executives and professional men." Its pamphlet boasted that, "When you join here, your associates are ‘your kind of folks,' from every standpoint!" It offered a "fully appointed Club House, our own farm, complete commissary, a chancy golf course, three lakes. . .swimming, boating, trail-riding, shooting and trout-fishing." By 1929, its dining room hosted two hundred patrons and was open year round. [160]

Depressed land values from failed or struggling farms only added to the enticement of the area for vacationers. "The larger lakes and many of the better small ones have summer cottages along their shores, and the summer hotel, too, has become very important in the lakes country," wrote University of Wisconsin geographer, Raymond Murphy in 1931. "Prices are considerably lower than would be the case in a better agricultural section where agriculture would compete with resorts for the land, and, moreover, summer visitors find relatively wild unsettled areas more attractive." Murphy, however, could not help but notice the contrast between the poor and abandoned farms of the cutover and the new summer homes being built. "Wooded shores of the larger lakes," he wrote, "are the sites of expensive summer homes and resorts which seem strangely out of place in this unfruitful country." [161]

The success of tourist recruitment to the north woods, however, had its down side. The area was not prepared for the large numbers of tourist who began roaming the countryside in automobiles. Travelers who had difficulty finding or affording accommodations began a practice called "gypsying." Without a railroad to funnel them into specific locales at specific times, car travelers simply took to the roads, stopping and starting as their desires struck, and they camped wherever they pleased. While the gypsy tourist reveled in the new freedom from civilization, farmers found them a downright nuisance. Picnickers and campers often left their garbage behind and relieved themselves. Bolder ones helped themselves to local produce. Since they needed the money tourists brought into the area, local authorities were reluctant to harass the "gypsies." Communities were then forced to find other ways to house and police these wanderlusts. Public parks and campgrounds proved to be one answer. Local resort owners also responded to the call by catering to this more modest income group. After 1925, tourist and cabin camps gained popularity with those tired of auto-camping. Individual cabins offered outdoor, quasi-communal settings with family privacy in comfortable accommodations, sometimes including a central dining/recreation hall, central bathhouse, and gas station. Another complaint of locals was that these new tourists were somewhat pesky with their demands that accommodations match those in the cities, and they expected local residents to fit a stereotyped image of north woods pioneers. But most residents swallowed their irritations and learned to please paying guests. [162] Well into the 1930s and 1940s, cabin owners provided better furnishings, homey decorations, plumbing, bedding, and kitchen equipment. Travelers no longer had to carry makeshift households in their car, so travel became much easier and both tourist and host communities were much happier. [163]

The increased recreation and automobile traffic was also a boon for the ferry business. During the 1920s and 1930s the Soderbeck family ferried automobiles across the St. Croix River just north of Grantsburg. The season opened with the spring ice break-up and ended with the winter freeze. Rather than drive down to St. Croix Falls or up to Danbury to use the bridges there, travelers chose the leisurely trip across the St. Croix that cost them fifty cents. Years later Bill Soderbeck recalled many humorous tales of misadventure on the ferry, such as two preachers overshooting the ferry deck causing their car to hang precariously over the edge, as well as a group of genuine gypsies offering to pay their way across by telling fortunes. Nonetheless, the ferry passage was critical to the recreation business and the new breed of vacationers in their Model T's. [164]

Through the years, Burnett County attracted many vacationers, and summer resorts sprouted along their shores. "Many lakes and river shorelands that we would not have taken as a gift thirty years ago," wrote one old timer in 1976, "are beauty spots now and provide homes and retreats for many." One enterprising promoter was Iver Johnson. He began his career as a humble postmaster in Webb Lake, Wisconsin with a side business of running a little Indian trading store. Any travelers who ventured into the store at mealtimes were always asked to dinner. One guest who visited in the mid-1920s changed Johnson's life. He was Gus Munch, a Chicago baseball pitcher and sports writer.

Before Munch left, he asked the Johnsons to build a new cottage and promised to write an article in Outdoor Life and Recreation. Munch kept his promise and described Webb Lake as a "veritable paradise for the bass fisherman looking for virgin waters and as yet but little fished and less known. . ."Tis indeed a delightful country for the sportsman who wants to camp out in the wilderness and not be bothered by tourists. They don't get there. The roads are too bad, but the fishing! Well, go on up there, and try it yourself, you'll see!" Munch said Johnson could take care of two people interested in fishing in the area. Within a short time Johnson was receiving a dozen letters a day from sportsmen all over the region wanting to be one of the two he could accommodate. Johnson immediately began to build a cabin and rented a vacated house on Fairy Lake, pitched a tent, and added on to his store. He then proceeded to book twenty to thirty fishermen at a time charging three dollars a day for room and board. He met the sportsmen (women did not come then) at the train in Spooner and brought them over the rough country "to the land of beauty and good fishing." With his new business booming Johnson built more cottages, a tavern, and a dance hall that booked well-known traveling bands. By 1933, Johnson bragged that he could "accommodate 50. . .instead of being able to care for two." In a brochure he put together, Mr. Johnson assured his guests that, "Every effort was utilized to make our cottages the best in this locality. They are all new and well screened." The resort offered both light housekeeping cottages and sleeping cabins. The light housekeeping one were "completely furnished with good clean beds, bedding including linens, dressers, stoves, dishes, tables, chairs, rockers, rugs, and in fact everything that is needed except towels and tea towels." Guests who preferred to not cook, could dine in the main building. Johnson also offered river trips, tube floats, and horseback riding. As tourism boomed, other residents catered to the overflow the Johnsons could not handle. [165]

Beginning in the 1920s the American plan, which had been the model for resorts throughout the north woods in earlier years, gave way to what was called "housekeeping" style resorts. These were more individualistic and less expensive than the earlier American plan. Housekeeping resorts were composed of a collection of small cottages where guests were expected to bring their own food and linens and fend for themselves. There was no main lodge as a focal point for social gatherings. Stays were much shorter as well. The reasons for this shift where in part due to better roads and automobiles that allowed people to check out a variety of places in a single vacation. The wealthy began to build their own summer homes, often times buying a parcel of an American plan resort. And the new travelers had less money to spend. [166]

The Great Depression of the 1930s disrupted for a time this boom era in tourism in the far north woods. Hard times found the north woods with more cottages and resorts than people to fill them. "So rapidly have summer homes and hotels sprung up along the shores of better lakes," wrote an observer, "that today the number of commercial resorts is too great in proportion to the number of visitors for the business to be profitable." Hardship once again returned to the cutover. [167]