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Deer hunting was often included in early resort advertising, especially in the 1930s. It was the unofficial late closing of the tourist season. In 1945, my father decided to capitalize on Itasca State Park’s first deer season by adding a bunkhouse for deer hunters to our small resort near the park boundary. It contained about a dozen bunks made from 2 X 4s, and several cots. Hunters, especially from the Fargo-Moorhead area, stayed in the simple building. Nearby resorts overflowed with optimistic hunters, and many local families opened their homes to the vast numbers invading the woods. My mother hired a friend, Mrs. Gene Ferguson (Jessie), to help her and my young sister Betty prepare meals for the scores of hunters who came to eat at our store.

The first Itasca Park deer season, described in Part 1, was a “boom, boom, then bust,” but our bunkhouse held returning hunters each season for several years. We became familiar with their unique nicknames and personalities. I was “hired” to sweep the floor, carry water, and keep the barrel stove supplied with wood. Each morning I looked for loose change that the men dropped during their late night, loud, poker games when more than enough bottles of Old Crow and Hamm’s were consumed.

(click on image to enlarge)

My dad bought a super-sized postcard that reminded him of our bunkhouse hunters (except for the meal preparation). He tacked it on a wall in our store and it always drew a laugh from men. Women smiled, but I think they viewed it as crude and uncouth. The card was created by Norman Pettingill, a part time hunter, fisherman, and trapper from northern Wisconsin. He made numerous primitive ink drawings that covered all kinds of backwoods topics, selling his strange cartoons as 7 X 10 inch postcards. I kept the card in my memorabilia collection and a copy hangs in our hunting camp. A scan of Pettingill’s postcard, “Daylite [sic] in the Swamp” is shown here (It is not reproduced in my books). It probably draws the same comments today as it did in 1947!

I grew up around deer hunters, and deer hunting has become part of a family tradition–a tradition that includes old friends and neighbors, all sharing delicious food, a variety of drinks, exaggerated stories, and photos to reminisce about past seasons. Each autumn our family joins approximately 475,000 recreational deer hunters, who help balance the state’s deer herd numbers, enjoy Minnesota’s outdoors, and provide a 260 million dollar economic boom to Greater Minnesota businesses and resorts before the big chill of winter arrives.

If you have a unique story about tourism or early resorts you’d like to share on my blog, click here to submit it for consideration.

Deer have been an important part of Minnesota’s scenery since the forests were first opened by logging. They have proliferated along areas of forest and open meadows throughout the state. Antlers and mounted heads adorn lodges and cabins and have always matched the rustic flavor of log buildings. For some early resorts, the summer resort calendar extended to the annual deer season.

Deer received extraordinary attention throughout the state in 1945 when the 32,000 acre Itasca State Park was opened for deer hunting. Until then, hunters could only hunt up to a “Limit Line,” which was a marked trail a half-mile from the boundary. Without hunters or predators, the deer herd had grown so large (estimated at 3,000) that almost a third were starving. Wolves, which might have controlled the population had been greatly reduced between 1927 and 1930 when 38 were removed by park trappers. Any new pine seedlings in the park were being eaten or deformed by foraging. Some of the deer had become so accustomed to people they were almost tame.

The high deer population and the tree damage created much controversy, since many locals doubted the deer counts. Businesses nearby opposed a hunt since the large deer herd attracted tourists, many of whom were no doubt charmed by Walt Disney’s animated film Bambi, first released in 1942. Those against opening the park believed that any starving deer could be saved with hay or by moving them to other locations; a deer hunt would be a “slaughter.” Finally in 1945 the legislature set the 9 day hunting season.

On the first day a continuous barrage of rifle shots could be heard from inside and around the park. Part of this was due to the number of deer, and part may have been because of bad shots by inexperienced hunters. Open sights on old rifles and shotguns with homemade slugs also resulted in many shots missing their targets. (This was as WW II was ending and new guns and ammunition were scarce.) My uncle counted seventeen hunters pulling deer along an opening near the south edge of the park near our resort. John Dobie, an early park forestry and fisheries expert, wrote in his book The Itasca Story that 2,015 deer were reported killed in the park by hunters in 1945 (an average of over 40 deer per square mile). In 1946, Dobie states only 115 deer were killed.

The first Itasca deer hunt demanded a harsh and realistic attitude toward the park’s deer herd numbers, tree regeneration, and the role of hunting.

Early Deer Seasons, Part II continues next week.  (click here to read Part II)

On August 13,1973, Time Magazine’s cover was labeled “The Good Life in Minnesota.” It showed a smiling young Governor Wendell Anderson lifting a northern pike. While 1973 would not be considered in the early resort period, I included the Time cover in The Early Resorts of Minnesota because the book is also about tourism and the ways that early resorts strove to attract guests. The famous cover no doubt was a bonus in helping make Minnesota a national destination to those seeking a happy outdoor vacation. Holding up a fish has always been a traditional Minnesota photo opportunity, especially for resorts.

Brian Kobilka

On October 12, 2012, I searched for a photo in another publication, the Little Falls Community High School Flyer Yearbook. I was looking for Brian Kobilka, a 1973 graduate. Kobilka made worldwide headlines that day as a Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2012 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry (click here to read a StarTribune article). It was a huge honor for Kobilka and his parents, and in turn, it credited the United States, Minnesota, and the Little Falls community for the role education played in his development as an individual and as a scientist.

As I paged through the yearbook, I found that 1973 was special in other ways. That year an outstanding new community high school opened in Little Falls. The guest speaker at its dedication was then-Governor Wendell Anderson! It was also a year that introduced a superior vocational education program, along with a new emphasis on special education. Many new teachers and staff were hired in 1972 and 1973. The high school changed to a quarter system, allowing numerous exciting new classes to be introduced.

A large part of the new spirit in education was due to a change in school financing that the legislature passed in 1971 and which Wendell Anderson had championed. It became known as “The Minnesota Miracle.”

Click here to read a recent interview I did with the Park Rapids Enterprise regarding The Early Resorts of Minnesota.

The Early Resorts of Minnesota is now available!  Click on the cover below to order.

It was a pleasure to visit Duluth recently. Ida Mae and I stayed at the Fitger’s Inn. This exceptional hotel is located in the large complex that once housed The Fitger’s Beer Company on the waterfront of Lake Superior. The brewery, built in the 1880s, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Fitger’s was a major producer of beer in the 1940s. It closed in 1972. Historic photos and brewery memorabilia are displayed throughout the hotel.

The Fitger’s truck is parked in front of our resort store in 1949 (click to enlarge).

The name “Fitger” was one of the first names I can remember. It goes back to a time when my older brother Elmer Jr. lived with us at the resort just before World War II interrupted our lives. One of my first memories of Elmer Jr. was when he drove the “new” truck into the driveway of our store. The beer truck carried a light yellow beer cooler with black lettering that I would later learn to read as “Fitger’s.”

My father and two brothers removed the cooler and used the 1936 Ford truck for hauling pulp and lumber from a small sawmill that my father owned. The cork insulated cooler would later make a good shelter for a dozen bantam chickens that were under my care as a boy. A single kerosene lantern kept it warm in the winter. Bantams, sometimes called “Banty,” are miniature chickens that lay eggs about one-half the size of those of regular laying hens.

The Fitger’s truck was used for my first driving experience–a stop and go procedure where I drove the truck and my father loaded bales of straw from fields on my grandmother’s farm in the Red River Valley. After that, I advanced to driving the logging trails on our property.

Oddly, three days ago Elmer Jr. and I talked about the Fitger’s truck during a telephone conversation. He couldn’t remember where Dad bought it, but spoke of how it was used at the resort before he entered the Navy. This conversation with Elmer Jr. would be our last. He passed away yesterday in Broomfield, Colorado at age 89, 72 years after my first memory of him and the truck. He will always be remembered as a cherished, kind, and generous brother.

Sebago Camp didn’t match the style and size of some of the other early Brainerd area resorts. Located on the north side of Round Lake near Nisswa, it was quite small and isolated. But due to an incident in 1933 it found a big place in Brainerd’s history when some late summer travelers wandered in. They told owner Clarence Penney that they were land speculators and needed a place to stay. The mysterious guests stayed for several days in Cabin 2.

Baby Face Nelson, ca 1931

Penny would soon learn that the First National Bank of Brainerd had been robbed by a five-member gang that fired shots into buildings in downtown Brainerd, narrowly missing several citizens. Penney recognized two of the five when the ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS published photos of the suspected robbers. One was the notorious Baby Face Nelson, another his red-haired girlfriend. Sebago’s Cabin 2 had been their base for planning the October 23, 1933 robbery.

John Dillinger, ca 1933

Donald E. Fish, a caretaker at Sebago Resort, wrote a short book titled, Sebago Resort: A History 1926-1986. He believed that John Dillinger may have been one of the gangsters who planned the robbery. His opinion was based on finding “Dillinger and Pals” written beneath the seat of a cabin chair. Dillinger had escaped from an Ohio prison on October 12, 1933, eleven days before the robbery, thus may not have wanted to attract attention by physically participating in the actual robbery.

In April of 1934, Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson escaped from federal agents in a shoot-out at Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin. A short time later, in July of 1934, Dillinger was killed in Chicago. Nelson was killed in November. Their deaths marked a turning point in the FBI’s war on gangsters.

Many resorts have tales about gangsters, especially from the days of Prohibition when gangsters frequented Minnesota. Dozens of books have been written about John Dillinger, including Paul MacCabee’s John Dillinger Slept Here, a detailed history of Dillinger in St. Paul.

John Dillinger, whether sleeping, sitting, or running from the law, was considered an extremely dangerous bank robber who caused fear, injury, and death to many innocent people. It would be interesting to know if he really sat in the chair at Sebago Resort, or why his name was signed like a celebrity. He certainly wouldn’t have written his name to achieve identity, since he already had plenty of that. Maybe he felt “left out” of the action, or maybe just bored. Had somebody who later rented the cabin “signed” the chair to fuel one of the many Dillinger stories? We may never know for certain, but we do know that Sebago Resort has a story that will never die.

If you’d like to share stories or images from early resorts, click here to submit them for consideration and we may be able to include them in this blog.

To learn more about early resorts, The Early Resorts of Minnesota will be available in late September at your local bookstore or by ordering from this site.

(Both FBI mug shot photos above are courtesy of Wikipedia)