WHY REMEMBER? This is but one story of Sand Island. It is not history. For history is that which took place before my time, and before those who would share remembrances with me and a bit of their own lives on Sand Island.
Much of what I write, I saw. That which I did not see was told to me by Uncle Carl [Dahl] and Aunt Alma [Dahl], and by Uncle Mel [Dahl]—each of whom spent a lifetime, seventy years and more on Sand Island. And by Grandma Palm [Bessie Nelson], Betty’s mother. For Bessie came to Sand Island in 1902, forty years before I was to set foot on Sand Island.
I first came to Sand Island, not knowing of Betty’s ties to the island. I would learn that once she had lived here with her father, mother, sister, brothers and grandmother. And here, too, on this island over the years had lived six uncles, six aunts, a step-grandfather and many cousins. And wonderful, caring islander friends.
Here would come four brothers, two sisters and their mother, all immigrants from Norway, and for a short time in their lives they would all settle on this place. Sand Island. Then to seek their fortunes elsewhere, some near and far. Christine, Julia, Will, Magnus and Carl would leave. Only one, Ludwig, Betty’s father, would hold ties to this island to this day. For Ludwig Palm would marry Bessie Nelson, born in Bayfield of Norwegian immigrant parents, with family ties to Sand Island from her earliest years.
I would come to love Sand Island. And I, too, would be a part of its summer enchantment.
And so I would write of Sand Island and chronicle its story. For now that story is ending. For in the five generations of those families in East Bay of whom I write not all but two are gone from Sand Island. Gone are the Dahls, the Hansons, the Bondes, the Norengs, the Moes, the Loftfields, the Bjorns, the Johnsons, the Wellisches, the Aabels. All gone. And a Dr. Diersen and Sven Bergstrom, and Clyde Nerland, too, out of the past. And the Coles, the last to come to East Bay in the sixties, gone too.
The Westhagens hold fast.
Of Betty’s family, only one brother, Howard Palm, with his family remains.
And Betty’s roots…
-Erv Tanning, 1981
Each man should have an island Where he can roam the shores And look out on the seas…
Wherein each precious hour Midst roaring waves or calm Alone, he lords o’er all he sees.
-Erv Tanning
In those days, Little Sand Bay was more than just a name…
On summer days there was always someone coming and going. By boat or by car. Campers. Picnics and ballgames on weekends. And on holidays where hordes of people.
Hermie Johnson was usually to be found around his store, or down around the dock or his fish house. If Hermie was gone, he was on his boat, the Sand Bay, hauling natives and tourists to and from the neighboring Apostle Islands. Or early mornings, lifting nets. Fishnets scattered everywhere, the faint smell of fish in the air, with seagulls soaring in the air or riding the seas, Hermie was always around. Somewhere.
In his unwashed white sea-captain’s hat with snooze running down his chin, Hermie was the very picture of an authentic old sea salt. Born in nearby Bayfield, and then raised in that five miles encompassing Sand Island and his Little Sand Bay, his was a lifetime immersed in every facet of the life of this small world.
Hermie was authentic, though his tales were often not. But, he knew the sea. And we listened. For Lake Superior was huge it was treacherous. And its storms were legend. As were its tragedies.
On that day we gathered driftwood on the beach at Little Sand Bay and lit a bonfire. Across the waters on Sand Island they would see our fire and someone would come for us. For that was the way, then. And, soon, we saw the Eggersund coming across the deep waters, Betty’s Uncle Carl at the helm.
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And there was much joy on Sand Island. It was the summer of ’42, and relatives and friends were waiting for Betty and her soldier-husband.
Betty knew the island well. And its people. For here was her heritage. Her mother had first visited Sand Island in 1902 as a little girl and had lived on the island at various times over the years.
Betty had lived on Sand Island from May, 1932 to August, 1933. In that year of the Great Depression her whole family would leave the mainland for the island and move into the The Egersund and the Turner at the Johnson Dock on Sand Island, 1942 vacant Edwin Bonde log cabin to survive. Edwin was a brother-in-law to Betty’s father. Married to his sister, Christine. The cabin was in need of repair and so they spent May through July in a guest cabin near the bank at the Loftfield place while they readied the cabin for the long, hard winter. For they must lay in a winter’s provisions. Milk, eggs, beef and potatoes would come from the Noreng farm and apples from the Loftfield orchard, but flour, beans, prunes and other staples must be procured. Howard would snare rabbits for Thanksgiving. He would trap weasels and sell the pelts. He would help his dad cut firewood. There would be no school that year for Howard, Betty and Dick. And Joan was only four. In the spring, Grandma Magdalene, Ludwig’s mother, would come to live with them. And older brother, Leonard, too. For there was no work on the mainland.
Betty remembered all this. And so now it was like a homecoming for her. A ten-year reunion. And I would be a part of it. And we would visit every family and explore and roam the world she had known as a ten-year-old. From Lighthouse Bay to the island’s westernmost Shaw Point.
We would stay with the Bert Norengs in their new home at East Bay. Farming was ending on the island, and the Norengs were the last to give up. Only a cow or two remained in the barn on their farm inland, now deserted. Land bought from Edwin Bonde and farmed for some thirty years.
The old schoolhouse stood at the side of the country road that ran along East Bay, just a short distance inland. School had ceased even before 1932. Once the social center of the island, in Uncle Carl’s schooldays as many as 28 children daily attended grades 1 through 8. Two Model-A
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Fords stood on the road nearby, and a Model-T Ford was next to the Elvis Moe blacksmith shop. The Moe place stood empty.
Our days on Sand Island were too few. And the days too short. And we would go to Uncle Carl’s and talk far into the night.
There were deep sandstone caves between Swallow Point and Justus Bay to row within, and explore. And great expanses of sandy beaches to gather shiny stones and driftwood. Rocky shores from which to watch the pounding seas and distant ore boats crossing the immense waters beyond Devils Island bound for Sault Ste. Marie and its locks three hundred miles to the East. It seemed always there were ships on the horizon. At night we could see their lights afar.
There were cold waters breaking on the beach at East Bay for the hardy to swim and frolic in. Orchards with apples and open fields with wild fruits and wildflowers to relish.
Down to the Johnson dock to meet the Turner and watch as they unloaded supplies and took on board the boxes of fish catch destined for Booth Fisheries in Bayfield. Three times a week the Turner came to Sand Island, and always there were excursion passengers to greet.
And we would rise early to ride atop Uncle Carl’s Egersund as he went out to sea to lift nets for the day’s catch of trout and whitefish. This was his livelihood. Even as his father before him.
We knew, even then, that his father, Harold Dahl, had been lost to these seas. And never found. Setting his first nets of the season in April of 1928 beyond Lighthouse Bay, he was caught in a sudden, terrible storm, the swirling, grinding ice flows preventing his seeking refuge in the Sand Bay channel. Herman Johnson, Sr. and Louis & Elvis Moe who were also setting nets in that area made it to safety in their boats around the outer side of the island to West Bay from where they walked across the island to their homes. And there was hope through the night for Harold. And then great grief. And Carl, far off in the navy in Honolulu, would learn that his dream and premonition of the terrible storm dad come true. And Mel would grieve that he had not been with his father, for he stayed home to break bread. At seventeen, he and his sister, Mable and Carl would mourn for their father. And our Grandma Palm whose widowed mother had married Harold when she was eight, would mourn her step-father. And she would come to Sand Island to take Mel with her and Ludwig.
…And as the long, long nets were lifted into the Eggersund we would look far down into the clear waters to see the fish drawn up out of the deep.
We did not know, then, that one day in the years to come, Carl would stand on the dock at Huling’s and grieve as he watched his Eggersund tear loose from its moorings and be cast upon the rocky shore. Though his boat would be repaired, and it still plies the seas to this day out of Bayfield, Uncle Carl would sell the Eggersund and fish no more.
And soldier and wife would return to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
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World War II had long ended before we returned to Sand Island in the late 1940’s. And the soldier who had spent seven months service in his parent’s Norway found a spirit of kinship in this island’s people.
Now with our children, Ron and Larry, and Grandma Palm we stayed at Uncle Mel & Aunt Adele’s house, once owned by Dr. Diersen. Uncle Carl and Aunt Alma lived but a stone’s throw away.
Now, most of the island homes stood vacant, weathered but hardy, most with many furnishings intact. The Johnson dock was gone; only one crib could be seen several feet below the water line. The island traffic had turned to the shelter of the Moe dock at the very eastern end of East Bay. The Turner still plied the islands. Uncle Carl was still fishing.
Each year, now, we would return to Sand Island. And one year Betty’s brother, Dick, would come with us. And then another brother, Howard. In the mid 1950’s Dick would reclaim the land where the family had lived in the Bonde cabin in 1932. The cabin was in ruins.
Just down the shoreline at the site of the old Johnson dock the Johnson frame house still stood. Now owned by Hermie, the house was for sale. We would clear the old county road and move it. The house was readied. The cedar posts to support the house were set in the ground. And we waited…
On a warm, sunny Monday morning we sighted the barge bringing the bulldozer from Bayfield. Once unloaded, we watched as it pushed the old cabin over the bank. Then, slowly the old, two-story house was dragged on rolling logs to its new home and set in place. Everyone came to watch!
And into the early 1970’s we would come to Sand Island each year to work and to play. To fix and repair the old house. To build an addition to the house to accommodate a growing family, for by now there were Carole, Mark and Brian, sister and brothers to Ron and Larry. And brothers, Leonard Palm and Bill Palm and their families would come. To build cribs and a dock, which each year the winter storms would destroy. And first Dick, and then Howard would marry.
New families and new lifeblood came to Sand Island. The Coles bought the Noreng place, refurbished it, and built a huge new dock. The Huling and Anderson families spent the summers on the island at Shaw Point, where Frank Shaw had originally pioneered and where their daughter Anna would marry Burt Hill and later operate the cooperative grocery store and post office. And even attempt an ill-fated underwater cable telephone line to the mainland through the island cooperative.
The Bill Hulings would rebuild the old Hill place, all the while maintaining the character of the buildings and yet creating a homey, inviting atmosphere in the likes of a loggers shack, icehouse and store lean-to wherein garter snakes, bats, ants and other earthly creatures had long
- 4 - claimed residence. And the family would lease the lighthouse at the opposite end of the island and repair and restore it to its former grace. The Fred Andersons now occupied the Fiefield place where once Sam Fifield ran a large tourist resort, Camp Stella, and operated an excursion steamboat, the Stella, both named after his wife, to bring people to this place from Ashland and Bayfield.
Now, the Huling’s boat, the Admiral, could be seen coming and going, daily in the bay.
How the families had grown. The Carl Dahl family now numbered five children: Freddie, Connie, Sharon, Carly and Bob. And now there were grandchildren. The Mel Dahls with five sons roaming the beaches: Harold, David, Phillip, Steve and Norman. The island was coming alive again!
The Westhagens, with their sons Eric and Allen, now lived in the house that Fred Hanson build between East Bay and Swallow Point.
The Yenches were still at their place near Shaw Point. Their roots went back many years on Sand Island. And now there was a logging camp set up at West Bay and there were strangers at the lodge there.
The old empty houses and buildings were slowly deteriorating, and becoming ever more dangerous to enter. But always fascinating to us all, and we would wonder what it must have been like to have lived here in these houses in earlier days. We would roam and explore every nook and cranny.
We would boat around the island and visit York Island and Eagle Island where we would look far across the waters to Northern Minnesota shores. Ever gathering driftwood and stones at Lighthouse Bay and Justus Bay and in our own East Bay. And searching, too, at water’s edge for broken pieces of colored glass, ground to a glistening stone of beauty in the course of time in the ever shifting waters. Entering ever further into the caves with their eerie sounds of the sea, the children fearing always the rock, earth and trees above us would bury us in a watery grave. And each year we would climb over, around and under the rugged, rock coasts between Justus Bay and the lighthouse.
And building sand castles.
Grandma Palm, then in her seventies, always went with us. These were the happy years. And these years would be too few.
First, there were only rumors. But we would learn that they were true. We would know that the federal government wanted the Apostle Islands for a National Lakeshore Park. And they would tell us we must move off the island. If not today, tomorrow. There was no recourse.
And so they took our Sand Island.
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Little Sand Bay store and camp ground, 1972
The Coles left first and we never saw them again. Their fine home was soon leveled.
Gert Wellisch’s beautiful home at the western end of East Bay was emptied, and suddenly Gert and her friend, Muriel Korfhage, were gone. And a stranger occupied her house. A ranger. And he could not know of her Sand Island wall hanging…
Oh, how I love on a fair summer’s eve Far, far away to leave All meaner thoughts and take a reprive From little cares
On the mainland, Little Sand Bay was no more. For Hermie Johnson was gone. And Agnes. And nobody came anymore. Only the rangers were there.
Hermie’s boat, the Sand Bay, sat high aground near the marina at Bayfield. For sale. And we would climb aboard, Betty and I, for one last, lingering look.
On the Fourth of July, 1980, only last year, Betty and I drove to Little Sand Bay, and ours was the only car there. We were there all alone. ‘No Overnight Parking,’ it said. And I thought, what irony.
And we could only look out across the waters to Sand Island, where Uncle Mel would soon leave the island where he was born. For this was his last year on Sand Island.
And we drove back to Bayfield.
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I walked alone along the beaches on Sand Island only last week. A cloudy September day, 1981. And I remembered.
Oh, I wasn’t there in the beginning when those first hardy Norwegian settlers first came to Sand Island to farm and log and fish. They had built a bustling community then. And I don’t even know when that was. Certainly before the 1900’s. And only with the coming of the automobile would they start to move off the island. Perhaps, they thought, to seek a better life. Or an easier life. Betty, 1981
Grandma Palm heard and saw much in her years. And she remembers. Now eighty-seven, Bessie has seventy-five years and more of memories of Sand Island. Days of picnics and dancing. Happy days. And days, too, of illness and sadness. For its waters, too, had claimed the lives of children. Innocent lives.
And I thought back to 1942. It was mostly all still there then. And it would all be gone in my lifetime.
For each year, now, would take its toll. Not only the seas. And the ravages of time and nature. But those, too, who have domain now would change all that has been wrought.
The school house is gone. And we do not mourn, for much of it was salvaged in the 1950’s and 60’s to be used on other island buildings. Where did all the children go? Aagot Loftfield, sister of Magnus Loftfield had taught here. And Edwin Johnson, too. He married Madeline Bonde, a niece to Betty’s father Ludwig. Only a few years ago their son, Bill Johnson, docked his boat on the island several times to visit. He came from Superior.
At the Loftfield place, only the base of the fireplace stands. The rangers have cleaned everything else up. Even the spot where the guest house stood at the bank. And Betty could remember how it was in that short time her family had stayed there. Only a few pieces of glass on the ground to mark the spot. And clinging to the bank, bits and pieces of house and furnishings waiting to be reclaimed by the seas.
Here in days long, long past there was Camp Solheim. Norwegian for ‘Sunny Home.’ A large family and guest house, a guest cabin and a tiny store. Board and room two dollars a day, ten dollars a week. Here, too, there were relatives. For Aunt Mabel would marry Magnus Loftfield. And there would be more cousins, Roger and Jim.
And I remembered how vandals had strewn books and magazines and furnishings about, the house each year in greater agony. The huge Pickering grand piano which in those earlier years still sounded music in its keys. I had been filled with wonder that they were even able to move it onto the island. And dismayed that it was beyond my capacity to salvage this magnificent instrument before it too would succumb to the ravages of time. Now there is only bramble.
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I am amazed that the tiny Aabel place next to Uncle Carl’s still stands, though it is in shambles and rotting, hidden in the dense tree growth. And invisible from the shore. The Aabel son who returned one day some years ago to announce that someday he would come bak to fix up the old place. He never came back.
The Noreng farm is in ruins, the long path back to its inland site almost impenetrable from the small park the rangers have built inland form the still-standing Cole dock. A park, seemingly, no one visits. Except the summer’s resident ranger.
The house were Uncle Mel was born has mostly crashed to the ground. Though it is usually called the Bjorn house, it was actually built by Jacob Johnson, Aunt Alma’s maternal grandfather. No relation to Herman Johnson. When the Dahls moved to the farm behind Moes and Hansons, the Bjorns moved into the house. Now the seas have encroached to its very walls, eroding away the high clay banks. Only this year an outer wall tumbled over the bank with a crash like a clap of thunder reverberating around the island. Only a couple walls stand. It is dangerous to approach. Once, Norman Dahl and our Mark thought the house was haunted!
When Elvis Moe left the island to pursue mechanics in Bayfield, he left a cluster of buildings safe on a jutting point on the shore at the eastern end of East Bay. The main house with a large shed behind, the large logger’s house and machine shed to the side near the bank, and a long, solid dock with fish house and shack. Elvis would return but a few years to fish, and he came no more. Only a few walls stand crumbling, the dock is gone, and now even the point is eroding. And with it the shelter it created. In the blacksmith shop at bank’s edge, the bellows and tools are long gone, and the roof is open to the sky. And who would remove the dilapidated, rusting old remains of the Model-T Ford that stood there all these years? For even that is gone.
The old main house nearby is almost hidden, and in ruins. The inside is littered with rotting fish nets. The shed behind lies on the ground. Soon the house, too, will fall. Here the Louis Moe family once lived, the hired loggers living in the large house at the bank. And I wondered which in its day was the finer house, for when Elvis married he moved into the logger’s house.
This place was once a beehive of activity. Betty remembers a man named Clyde Nerland who stayed with the Norengs building a boat here. Grandma Palm remembers that Clyde built two island houses, Uncle Carl’s in 1941 and Gert Wellish’s house.
And one looks at the heavy what-you-call-its lying scattered about and wonders what they were used for.
The logging camp was way back in the woods, almost to the outer side of the island. Carl worked there before going in the navy.
Not too far to the east toward Swallow Point stands the house that Fred Hanson built. Now owned by the Westhagens, they have made this place a task of love, and Eric has chosen to fight the government and remain here for his lifetime.
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And I remember how Aunt Alma in 1942 took Betty and me over to the Hanson place to meet her folks. Her brother, Jake, was building a cabin that today stands protruding way out over the now-eroding bank, supported by timbers to prevent its crashing into the waters. Was it not called the ‘Boar’s Nest?’ Near this very spot Fred’s father, Pete Hanson, had built a frame house in an earlier day, now long gone. Out behind stands the large barn, its roof fallen, a victim to winter’s heavy snows.
Near Swallow Point nothing remains of the house the Fred Hansons lived in when first on Sand Island. Alma’s grandparents. And the original Herman Johnson house and dock at Swallow Point is gone. But that was long ago.
It was near Swallow Point that six survivors of the ill-fated lake freighter, Sevona, seeking shelter in Sand Bay in a violent storm, were miraculously washed ashore in their floundering lifeboat on 2 September 1905. The ship, wallowing on the nearby Sand Island Shoals, would soon break in two and sink. The men entered the vacant Johnson house seeking shelter, and their light was seen by the Hanson family who gave them food and warm underwear.
In the morning they would recover four bodies along the shore. The captain and six sailors stranded on the forward deck without a lifeboat perished when the ship sank in 17 feet of water. Their distress signals were of no avail in such a storm. Three bodies were never found. Eleven others, including four women were tossed up in their lifeboat on the beach at Little Sand Bay. Five others perished in another shipwreck of the ore boat, Pretoria, in that same storm off Outer Island.
Hermie Johnson recovered the huge Sevona anchor in the early 1960’s from its watery grave and it is displayed today at Little Sand Bay. Today, divers still probe the Sevona remains on the bottom at Sand Island Shoals.
Behind the Westhagen place there are still fields, and one can see a few fence posts and barbed wire bits. Signs that this was once farm land. The Dahls had once lived in this area. And the Bjorn farm was here. Here, too, Sven Bergstrom had once lived. Sven, the accordion player who livened up the schoolhouse dances.
The old road to the lighthouse is only a winding path through fallen and standing trees now. Huge trees, among them pines up to eight feet around at man’s height, can be seen along the way in this dense forest.
The sandstone lighthouse at the eastern cliff will stand forever. Unused as a lighthouse since the 1920’s, an electronic tower now stands in front and warns approaching ships of the island and the Sand Island Shoals. The Emmanuel Luicks were the last lighthouse keepers. Van Alsein, the assistant.
Grandma Palm has told us how she once tended the candlepower for several days in the lighthouse keeper’s absence. The kerosene lamps needed changing each midnight, and she had to carry the heavy lamps up the circling iron steps to make the change. Followed every step of the way by 12-year-old Mabel. Bessie, then, in her early twenties.
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The Andersons, Hulings and Yenchs remain at the west end of the island. Eha’s huge lodge at West Bay, once the West Bay Club and later to be the site of logging operations, is long deserted. It, too, is losing its battle with the elements. The dock is gone.
Closer to East Bay, Uncle Will Palm’s place which stood between the shore and the county road is hard to find now. Nothing stands. Only rusted metal and rotting boards. Here, Will farmed and logged and later moved to Bayfield where his son, Flash, still lives in the same house in town with his brother-in-law Walt Lindquist. Another son, Dan, in Connecticut, owned land on Sand Island for many years.
Inland and across the county road, the old Radcliffe house once sheltered Aunt Julia and her five children for a winter. Julia, Mrs. Robert Kerr, would move to Chicago. A son, Harold, a talented sculptor of metal would return to Bayfield in the 1960’s and open up a store for his beautiful creations. Here, too, at the Radcliffe house Uncle Carl Palm once lived. He must have logged, for he once lived in the logger’s house at Moe’s on Sand Island. He would move to Superior to work on the railroad, raise three children, and die at age 95.
North of the Radcliffe house were T. Dahl (no relation) later built a house, Magnus Palm once lived. Ruins can be found here. Magnus also moved to Chicago. He had five children.
At East Bay only Howard Palm and Eric Westhagen and his mother remain. And now even Uncle Carl Dahl’s house stands deserted. Through the open screen porch my eyes sought out the ceiling hooks that once held my favorite porch swing. And I remembered the happy times in that house. I peered through the front windows, and the rooms were almost empty. The floors almost bare. Perhaps one more trip and all would be gone. For Alma and Carl, a lifetime on
Sand Island would end. And Sharon Old abandoned house near Moe's Dock, 1973 would cry to leave.
I stood at the bank and I looked out across the waters to Little Sand Bay where only yesterday Alma and Carl had greeted us as they came off the island. They left as we arrived. And Carl never looked back. For this was their last year, 1981.
I walked the beaches with Betty. The tide was way out for there was a storm coming. And, oh, there was sand for sand castles. Tomorrow’s waters might bring all the stones back in on the beach. But it was late September and our days were so few.
We would not leave on the morrow as we had planed. We could not cross the raging bay.
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On the morrow, I walked the beach at East Bay alone as the breakers rolled in. I looked out across the turbulent waters and remembered there were times we crossed when we shouldn’t have crossed. In fog. In darkness. In rough waters when the landing was a contest between a boat, dock and sea. And a night when our boat tore loose from the dock in howling winds and Dick and I would try desperately to save it, and in the calm morning find it at water’s edge, filled with sand and water. But we would salvage it.
Oh, there were many storms. Perhaps that was one reason we loved Sand Island. For there were times we wished for a storm. So we would be stranded and not have to leave. Was not such a wish in my heart, only yesterday?
I paused at the Moe logging house. Its days are numbered, now. And I thought. There are no more loggers. No more farmers. No more fisherman. All these people are gone. And we were so few left. Were Sand Island Lighthouse, 1981 not our days numbered, too? Did we not know all the time that if Hermie Johnson on the mainland at Little Sand Bay was the first to go, how could we survive on Sand Island?
I searched for driftwood at Justus Bay, alone. For I could never leave Sand Island with pockets empty of such treasure. I walked the full length of its beautiful, sheltered sand beach. There was solace there, even with the thundering roar of the raging seas close by, on that day.
And I remembered… All the time remembering how it was. I have happy memories. And yet I am sad.
And I remembered, too, Joyce Kilmer’s poem, ‘The House With Nobody In It.’
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof, And the shutters fallen apart. For I can’t help thinking the poor old house Is a house with a broken heart.
What have we done to our beloved Sand Island…
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EPILOG, 2013
Howard Palm, Betty’s brother died in June, 1996; he was cremated and like some of his ancestors his remains were buried on Sand Island. His children continued to spend summers there until the lease agreement which he had signed with the Department of the Interior expired in July, 2000. Within a year the old Johnson house was removed and turned into another campground—the same fate that happened with the Mel and Carl Dahl homes.
Erv Tanning died the day before his 94th birthday on August 27, 2010.
Betty (Palm) Tanning turned 91 on July 3, 2013, and continues to live in her house in White Bear Lake, Minneosta.
Joan (Palm) Haugland & her husband John live in Superior, Wisconsin.
Richard (Dick) Palm & his wife LaDonna live in Big Lake Minnesota and Tucson, Arizona.
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