As our route to Grand Portage, Duluth, Minneapolis and other popular destinations, Highway 61 is a familiar piece of road. What might not be so familiar are the stories associated with Highway 61. Here are a few of them.
Naniboujou Lodge
Just south of Hovland you may have noticed the sign for Naniboujou Lodge. Naniboujou Lodge was intended to be the private playground for a select group of wealthy investors. Plans for the Lodge were unveiled in March 1928 and included a clubhouse with a dining room, 150 bedrooms, a golf course, and tennis course all to be built on more than three thousand acres of land by the Naniboujou Holding Company. Membership was open to friends of the twenty-four-member Board of Governors. Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey were charter members of the exclusive Naniboujou Club. French artist Antoine Goufee was hired to paint the dining room and the results are breathtaking. Some have called Naniboujou's distinctive interior "the north woods' answer to the Sistine Chapel." Minnesota Governor Theodore Christianson was invited to the grand opening celebration on July 7, 1929. The Lodge enjoyed three years of prosperity entertaining its members before the stock market crash. Since then it has had several owners and is still open today. The interior of the dining area has not been changed. If you want to see the colourful decor without stopping in on your next drive, visit the Lodge's Web site at www.naniboujou.com. (Source: Tales of the road: Highway 61 by Cathry Wurzer)
Taconite Harbor
Taconite is an extremely hard rock that serves as an important source of iron metal. Until the 1950s companies did not mine taconite because the rock was too hard and contained too little iron to be produced at a profit. In the mid-1950s, scientists developed new techniques and equipment to profitably mine taconite and extract the iron ore. Taconite mining greatly increased the world's available supply of iron. (Source: WorldBook Online in My Giant Search)
In the late 1950s and through the 1960s and 70s Taconite Harbour was a busy little place. The Erie Mining Company built it to house workers employed at a specially designed shipping facility. Twenty-four families lived in modest ranch-style homes. There was a power plant, town hall, fire hall, ball field and a basketball court. For $400 down and $110 a month, many young couples bought their first home and started to raise families. A downturn in the taconite industry in the 1980s brought hard times, the power plant closed and workers lost their jobs. Eventually, the mining company bought up the houses and the families moved away. Some of the houses were moved away as well. Today it's a genuine ghost town, and most people miss it. To the average visitor, Taconite Harbor looks like a large field filled with grass, but if you look closely you can see rusting street lamps, chunks of concrete curb and old manhole covers. (Source: Tales of the road: Highway 61 by Cathy Wurzer)
Pierre The Voyageur
Found in Two Harbors at the Voyageur Motel, Pierre is a twenty-foot tall statue of a Voyageur made of mesh and fiberglass. Built in 1960, he stood guard at the center of the complex that included a museum, which has since vanished, and a hotel which is still operating. Back in his heyday, Pierre had lit, moving eyes, a shiny red paddle, and a booming voice that would greet children by name (after mom and dad dropped a note to the man with the mike at the desk of the motel). Pierre has been documented as a historical figure by the Smithsonian and the University of Minnesota. You can see a photo of Pierre with his paddle on the motel's Web site: www.voyageur-motel.net. (Source: 61 Gems on Highway 61 by Kathryn Mayo and William Mayo)
Joanna Aegard
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