Marion Brown Narrator

John Esse Interviewer

October 29, 1975 Grand Rapids, Minnesota

Marion Brown -MB John Esse -JE

JE: This is October 29th, 1975 and were taping this morning up in the ProjectFirst National Bank Building which is presently our office space, and with us today is Marion Brown who is a one time resident of Deer River and who presides out in California for part of the time, part of the year, and who has a considerable amount of knowledge on the background of the railroad, mainly because he did work on the railroad and also of course I believeSociety Marion, raised in Deer River? History MB: Was born in Grand Rapids. JE: You were born in Grand Rapids, and thenOral your father? MB: Well moved to Deer River when I was aboutHistorical a year and a half old. JE: Okay, now how old are you now, when were you born? MB: Seventy three. History JE: So you were born?

MB: September 3rd, 1902.

JE: OkayForest now how didMinnesota your father get to Grand Rapids then?

MB: Well my father came here originally in about 1898 I think it was, to teach school. He taught school in the Trout Lake area that was the Trout Lake by Coleraine.

JE: Okay.

MB: In fact he and my mother both taught in that area, that’s where they met, they taught at separate schools but they stayed with the same family, a family by the name of Faulkner. 1

JE: Uh huh.

MB: Mrs. Faulkner, their daughter Bessie Faulkner was of course was a very good friend of my mothers and she is still living and her name is Mrs. Tom Kingston, she lives in Bovey. Then from there my dad then went to work with the Decker Lumber Company that was located in Grand Rapids, and they were purchased in the early 1900s by the King Lumber Company, and the King lumber Company of course was in operation in Grand Rapids with several retail yards of the Iron Range area, and Deer River until just recently, within recent years and then they sold out to Lampert Lumber Company.

JE: Oh.

MB: And my dad went with the King Lumber Company when they acquired the Decker Lumber Company. In about 1903 he went to Deer River to manage the King Lumber Company Yard. And of course that’s where I spent my life until 1933. I might back track a little and say I was born in Grand Rapids on September 3rd, 1902 and as I mentioned my dadProject moved to Deer River with his family about 1903 and I was raised and went to school in Deer River and stayed there until 1933. JE: Just for a point of .history, was that school that is presently there,Society is that the one that was built at that time or? History MB: The original part of that school was built when I was in the second grader it was completed when I was in the second grade. Many additions have been put on it since including a dormitory that at the time was only it was one of onlyOral two high school dormitories in the United States. JE: What was the reason for that? Historical MB: Because of the large area that the school district covered, the school district covered a lot of the area north of Deer River and transportation facilities in those days were so inadequate that it was, that was the reason thatHistory the dormitory was built, so these children could, high school children could, students I should say, could stay in the dormitory or reside in the dormitory. Of course, probably most of them, a lot of them didn’t only go home for holidays.

JE: Ya.

MB: SomeForest had the opportunityMinnesota to go on weekends but, the dormitory for high school students was a very unique situation.

JE: Ya, most of the kids usually would live in somebody else’s home, and probably…

MB: Before they had the dormitory.

JE: Ya.

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MB: Yes, because it would be impossible to commute back and forth from a lot of that district to Deer River. Especially when the days when the roads were not made for travel anywhere’s near the way they are today.

JE: Right.

MB: But, and then of course as a child I, my father had his residents within a block of the downtown district of Deer River, and of course as a child Deer River was made up of, well you wouldn’t say principle but it had fourteen saloons at one time. Of course there were business places and Deer River from its early days was always considered until the mills went out, it was considered a very good business town. In fact it was considered the best business town in Itasca County. It served a big territory and the logging and mill operations were large operations in those days. At one time Deer River had a saw mill, Itasca Lumber Company saw mill, plain mill and the veneer mill, the veneer mill was established by two Bahr Brothers, Bill Bahr and Roland Bahr, and the mill was later taken over by the J.J. Natze Company of Chicago.Project JE: Oh.

MB: And the timber that they used was something that in the early days there was no market for, it was all very selective hardwood. Birch, Maple, Oak, Basswood, ElmSociety and of course they turned out some beautiful veneer products. And it was the only large hardwood operation that they ever had in this County and I wouldn’t hesitate to say in NorthernHistory Minnesota.

JE: Now we’re all three of those… Oral MB: And they were all operating at one time.

JE: Now were all three of those built after youHistorical moved to Deer River or were some of those operations already going? MB: No they were all builtHistory after my dad moved to Deer River. So you probably can recall some of the In fact as a young boy I started working in the mills when I, not in the mills but they wouldn’t allow a yo.ung boy in the mill, but I was fourteen years old when I had my first job, which was a summer vacation at the Itasca Lumber Company Mill. They hired kids my age to pile sixteen inch stoveForest wood. Minnesota JE: Uh huh.

MB: They used to cut this up from the trimmings and the slabs from the mill and they stored during the summer and it would dry out during the summer and then they sold it to residents in the community during the winter, by the wagon load. And of course they used a lot of wagons in the winter time but they would use the same box and put it on sled runners. It was good wood for cooking and fairly mild temperature, but it wasn’t adequate of course for severe temperatures.

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JE: Ya.

MB: And then, in later years as a young boy I was only fifteen years old and I was working, running a lath machine in the lath department of the mill. The lather department was in the same mill.

JE: Ya.

MB: And I did that for a couple of summers until the general manager of the operation happened to come through the mill on a instruction tour one day and asked the foreman how old I was, and I was only sixteen years old then, and the general manager said well that can’t be, he has got to be eighteen years old to run those machines. I could run the lath machine or any of the machines, and there were only two machines, one was a Bolder and one was a lath machine. The bolder cut the slabs and the trimmings to the dimension that would go in the lath machine, and the lath machine of course would make the final product. But the laths were made in thirty two and forty eight lengths. Project

JE: What type of wood was used to make those laths? MB: Well the only thing that they could cut in the mill was pine, the Societyvarious pines. Mostly, very little jack pine but primarily white pine and Norway. The other timber such as balsam, popple they were unheard of in those days for lumber they didn’tHistory make very good lumber. But the lath mill as I said was, in fact it was contracted to a man with my same name, Mr. Brown, and it was no relation. Oral JE: No relation.

MB: But the man that I liked very well and he Historicalliked me and it was quite very exceptional for a boy that age to be running a lath machines. JE: Ya, working in the mill.History MB: Of course I always aspired to make a little more money and the common in fact from the time I was sixteen years old I never worked for common labor, I always aspired for something higher and I always got it. I was commonly known amongst the people of Deer River as quite a hustler as a kid so I had no problem getting a job, in fact jobs came probably too easy because I worked inForest every mill thatMinnesota Deer River had, except the Plane Mill, and I never did work in the Plane Mill. There was one other mill, that I haven’t mentioned is what they called the Box Factory, I never made boxes, but it was operated and owned by the Raphar, Hare and Ridgeway Company who were subsidiary of the Armor Company, and the entire product went to the packing plants, but only as lumber, there were no blocks this way. They were cut to lumber dimensions after it got to its destination, to the packing plants.

JE: Well Armor owned that plant down here too in Hill City, the barrel factory.

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MB: Ya I am not familiar with that plant at all.

JE: Do you recall Marion the dates when these various mills came in?

MB: Well the sawmill as I remember, I shouldn’t say remember, because these facts have been passed on to me by my father and older men that I worked with, but I think the sawmill was ready for operation about 1904.

JE: Okay.

MB: Possibly 1905.

JE: Ya.

MB: And of course that Planing Mill was put up at the same time. In those days they dried all the lumber outdoors and now a days they have these…. Project

JE: Kilns. MB: Dry Kilns, why it would take a winter season to dry the lumber,Society the lumber was piled out in the yard between the Sawmill and the Planing Mill and that was a vast amount of lumber that would be piled in there by the time the mill closed in Historythe fall of the year. The mill only operated, ah, oh I would say from April to November, that is the sawmill. The Planing Mill runs the year round of course. Oral JE: Now did the men in the sawmill Marion go then out to the woods?

MB: A lot of them did, quite a few of them did,Historical of course the family men there was a lot of them that probably didn’t have any employment for a while in the winter time. JE: Yes. History MB: And then, of course they retained a certain number of men worked for repair work in the mill during the winter and the yard men of course they hauled dry lumber from the yard to the Planing Mill, because the Planing mill operated year round.

JE: Ya. ForestMinnesota

MB: And the shift year round.

JE: Can you explain…

MB: But the Veneer Mill, or I mean the as we call the box factory, that started as I remember about 1915, and the Veneer Mill somewhere near the same time. They started building that about that same time, They didn’t have a very long time of operation because it burned down I think it 5

was about 1919, and then they moved the operation to Grand Rapids, J.J. Natze Company who were operating in Deer River after they took over from the Bahr’s. It didn’t last very long in Grand Rapids either; I think it was only a matter of only three or four years.

JE: Oh.

MB: But getting back to the sawmill, the sawmill had its last run in 1919, I haven’t, ordinarily it takes five men to operate the machines and tie laths in the lath mill department, but the only, the mill run for three weeks on dead heads, they had picked up dead heads in the Mississippi River area and White Oak area to operate the mill for three weeks, and that was the last run where we ordinarily had five men on the machines, three of us contracted to run the lath mill, because we couldn’t get enough stock, dead heads don’t, aren’t conducive to making the trimmings from the dead heads were numerous wouldn’t be the amount that would be in the regular logs that were used for normal operations.

JE: Can you give the location of these business adventures in Deer River?Project

MB: The mills? JE: Ya. Society MB: Well the sawmill was located on White Oak LakeHistory in the North Shore of White Oak Lake.

JE: Okay. Oral MB: Somewhat, well about the middle of the lake, a little more west than the middle. The Planing Mill was directly south of that, probably a half a mile, and the box factory was in, well all of these operations were in Zemble Township,Historical that’s a township separate from Deer River…

JE: Okay. History MB: Their own government organization in the town of Zemble, and all these operations were in the town of Zemble. And the box mill was in the east portion of the town of Zemble, and the M & R railroad shops, the round house and their facilities were about the same distance from the lake as the Planing Mill in fact they were directly across the track from each other. They weren’t a block apart. In connection with the various mill operations I mentioned the Veneer Mill, the Veneer MillForest had fairlyMinnesota extensive logging opera tion while the mill was operating. In 1920 I clerked at one of their camps in the north end of Bowstring, and it’s too bad that we don’t have some virgin hardwood that we had in this country, that we had in those days, there wasn’t anywhere’s near as much of it as there was the pine and other timber products, but we did have a lot of hardwood and we had a lot of hardwood that was destroyed by forest fires.

JE: Ya.

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MB: And these forest fires most of them primarily originated because, from the burning of the slashings from the lumber operations.

JE: Now that was a law that they had to burn those slashings you know.

MB: Ya that was the law that they had Co burn them, but there was no law that said they had to control.

JE: Oh.

MB: And of course they spread until nature, and of course they didn’t go from one pine area to the other, these fires didn’t, but if there was like hardwood in between there, well there was no attention paid to that because it was considered an unmarkable timber in those days and it was a crying shame that it had to happen but it did happen. There were some hardwood stands that survived and then all of that hardwood that is the good hardwood was the hardwood that the veneer operation logged and used. Project

JE: Now you spent time as a clerk in a camp? MB: In the J. J. Natze Camp on the north end of Bowstring. Society JE: Now could you describe to me the kind of camp itHistory was, and how many men probably were involved in the operation of the camp? MB: Oh. At the peak of the operation I wouldOral say that we had about one hundred men. JE: Okay. Historical MB: And I forget the amount of number of feet that we logged that winter, but I would estimate that it would run into around a million feet at least. History JE: Okay.

MB: And the timber that was logged was logged off of land that was owned by about two hundred and forty acres of it was owned by a man by the name of Frank Miller who was an old timer in the Deer River area. In fact he owned the place that is now Bowstring Lodge, and Mele Johnson whoForest was anotherMinnesota old timer in that country had some land that we logged, and some Indian lots that were logged.

JE: Uh huh.

MB: It was a big operation, and we used, well of course we used four horse teams on ice roads, I am sure you are probably familiar with iced roads.

JE: Ya. 7

MB: But the reason for icing the roads was so they could haul bigger loads. Even with hardwood which they couldn’t haul, there were many feet of hardwood on a load of logs as it could pine because hard wood was much heavier.

JE: Heavier and a lot more density.

MB: Three or four thousand feet would make a big load for a four horse team with hardwood, while pine loads would run from six to eight thousand feet. And they used the sleighs had fourteen foot bunks on them. Of course when they ice the roads they don’t ice the entire road, just the rut area.

JE: Just the ruts.

MB: The ruts and the runners if I remember correctly were approximately six feet apart. And of course the horses walked in the center. However there was always water that spattered in the road and the horses had to be able to call sharp shod. Project

JE: Ya. MB: The shoes the corks were sharp shods so they wouldn’t slip and Societythey use to have quite a few accidents with these horses if they stumbled or something like that they would do what we called cork their selves. History

JE: Ya cut Oral MB: Cut out their lower legs.

JE: Ya. Historical

MB: And the barn bosses always took care of the horses, and I remember the one of the most popular remedies was keroseneHistory and turpentine, all they did of course was wrap them up and soak them and keep them clean and try to prevent infection, and it wouldn’t be too long before the horses would be ready, they would be able to go back to work.

JE: What kinds of horses were being used out there in that camp?

MB: WellForest they were bigMinnesota horses, in fact in the early days from the time I was a boy until my days in the M & R, I have seen many horses that were shipped from the North Dakota farms, and a lot of them were beautiful horses.

JE: Were they French bred…

MB: They were big horses, I beg your pardon?

JE: Were they French Percheron? 8

MB: Well they weren’t, no they weren’t thoroughbred horses.

JE: Ya, they were crossbreds?

MB: They were good heavy, I would say that, of course in the timber operation they didn’t need heavy teams for everything; the heaviest horses were used for the hauling operation.

JE: Ya.

MB: The smaller horses were used for skidding and for what we call cross haul teams, a cross haul team would pull the logs up with a jammer on the sleds or cars. The smaller horses were more, were better for that than the heavier horses. But those horses would come in the fall of the year from the North Dakota farms in beautiful shape, but when they were shipped back in the spring after a winters logging operation they were no where’s near as good. Some of them were pretty Chin. Project JE: Ya, pretty thin.

MB: But I am sure they would go back on the farms and pasture a while, by the time the spring work started on the farm they were probably in good shape again. Society JE: Now there… History

MB: Many carloads of horses were shipped into Deer River and some of them went to the logging operations tributary to Deer River Oraland the most of them were shipped on the M & R to the logging operations.

JE: Now the operation that you were on in thatHistorical year Marion, did they have tote roads or did they bring in their supplies by different means? MB: Well we didn’t necessarilyHistory need tote roads, by that time; you see this was 1920, by that time why there were a lot of county roads that were established, and especially the winter, after they froze all the county roads were in good shape for hauling. In the fall of the year we had a little problem, but not much. The road we used, the camp that I worked on the supplies would come up on the M & R railroad to Mack, and Mack was about seven miles from camp, and the supplies would come up there in the box cars and then our tote teams would haul from there, but we didn’tForest have tote roads,Minnesota as I mentioned before, we used the county roads. The tote roads as you refer to them are roads that the lumber companies cut through the woods.

JE: Old supply roads.

MB: Just the trails is all they were, and of course for the early supplies they used tote teams to haul a lot of that, and the things that they needed for logging operations were hauled from Deer River or Grand Rapids.

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JE: Let me ask you some questions on this camp, was the camp made out of logs or was it sawed lumber by that time?

MB: No we made the camp out of balsam, and we used balsam, small balsam not over four or five inches and then stood it upright, and then chinked in between the joints of the upright bolts Chat we called them, you wouldn’t call them logs, but the proper name would be bolts.

JE: Okay.

MB: And a chink between them to prevent the weather elements from coming through.

JE: How about the floor, was that made out of balsam? The floor was lumber and the roof was lumber.

MB: Okay it’s hard and we had, we had a bunk house, we had a bunk house, a barn, a blacksmith shop, a cook shanty as it was referred to a cook shanty that Projectincludes where the men ate, and an office building.

JE: Ya. Society MB: And then, of course in those, by that time the men at that time I remember that we, that was right after World War II. History

JE: One? Oral MB: One rather, and the timber market was comparatively high, going into that particular winter, as a matter of fact for the past few years up to that time the timber market had been very good, a very lucrative business. But that winterHistorical the timber market the bottom fell out of it. In the fall of the year we started hiring men for eighty dollars a month, that was the lowest pay, and we had men that made up to ninety and ninety five dollars a month, which included the four horse teamsters and the top loadersHistory and some of the more skilled men. JE: Ya.

MB: But as I mentioned the market went out of the timber and we started cutting wages, however we didn’t cut anybody, of course we started with a small crew building camp and until we got intoForest the heaviestMinnesota part of the operation. Well we started out with maybe I would say fifteen or twenty men building camp.

JE: Ya.

MB: Then gradually increased the crew as we put on the sawyers for cutting and then when we got into the hauling operation well then that was the peak, and that’s when we had approximately one hundred men. But the men that we hired in the fall of the year and those that were there at the time that we made a difference in the pay scale, we didn’t cut any of the men that we had. 10

JE: Uh huh.

MB: The new men we hired why we got to all, before the winter was over we were hiring men for fifty five dollars a month.

JE: Now did they have Marion a wannigan in the bosses and clerk’s area or…

MB: Oh I see what you mean, for supplies?

JE: Ya.

MB: Oh yes, ya we had a limited number, like socks and tobacco and not any heavy, we didn’t carry shirts, pants and those kinds of things, it was just a small, mitts just a few items like that. JE: Did you pay your men monthly or did they wait until the end of theProject time that they spent in? MB: Until the end of the time that they, whenever they quit why that’s when we, those that stayed of course until camp broke up in the spring if they started in the fall again, they had a pretty substantial check coming. Oh they had a drawing privilege. They could draw money against their wages. Society JE: I see. History

MB: Anytime they wanted it. Oral JE: Did they have…

MB: They didn’t need much being in camp becauseHistorical even then most of the men, there wasn’t very many men that would quit during the operation. There were some, but even at that time, it was always characteristic in the old days a lumberjack go up to camp, why he never quit until the spring. History JE: Ya.

MB: But as years went on why this situation changed and men got what we call stake bound. In the early Forestdays men workMinnesota ed for thirty dollars a month. JE: Ya.

MB: Of course the dollar was worth a lot more then too, but in later years why of course they got better wages and they would consider their selves more prosperous maybe, and earlier than the old lumberjacks would.

JE: Ya. Well here is another question, did those fellas, did the jacks stay in camp Marion year, not year round, but during that season or did some of them go into town? 11

MB: Well there was very few, most of them stayed in the camps, however we did hire some men that lived in the area, and they would on Sundays of course there was no five day week, it was six days a week.

JE: Ya.

MB: And on Sunday some of those men would go home for Sunday. In fact I had quite an experience in the fall of year, I needed, I shouldn’t say I, but the company needed some men and I, the closest village to our camp was the village of Inger, and Inger Village was comprised of Practically entirely with those Indians and of course I knew some of the young people in the Indian Village, I knew them real personally and some of them I might have even gone to school with, grade school with. We needed some men so I went over there to see if I could pick up about five men and I met one of the fella’s that I knew real well and his name was Robinson, and he knew some of the others. We were building camp this was in September and we, the boys they would go home on Sundays and the cook would save the dry things like whole potatoes, not potatoes, but pancakes, well yes potatoes and he put them Out doors butProject the dry stuff he put in one container and the stuff that we might call slop would be in another container, and on Saturday night these Indian boys would take this dry stuff back home with them. JE: Oh. Society MB: And I was always under the impression that it didn’tHistory all go for dog feed in anyway. I am sure that some of that they ate. JE: Ya. Oral MB: And then when they come back on Sunday evening they would bring fish back for the cook to use in camp. And these boys of course that was,Historical not to be derogatory about Indians in any way but it was just natural for them to not aspire to accumulate a lot of money and anything like that, it didn’t take much for the Indian boys and just before Christmas why they wanted to quit, and they were some of the boysHistory that I mentioned that were getting the high wages that we paid when we started camp.

JE: Oh.

MB: So I tried to persuade them to stay in camp because we weren’t going to cut their wages and they couldForest make aMinnesota nice stake before spring. But no, they didn’t see it that way they wanted to quit. So they did, and it wasn’t over about, oh I would say probably within three weeks why they were back to camp and wanted to go to work again. Well as it happened we could use them so I hired them and, but they went back to work for fifty five dollars a month.

JE: Of course that is a different culture that we are talking about too, and their aspirations are different than the kind of aspirations that the white culture has.

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MB: Ya that was always characteristic of the Indian people, as I said that was their way of living and it was nothing that you could really criticize them for.

JE: It was their way of doing it.

MB: It was their way of doing it, that’s right.

JE: How were they received Marion in camp by the other men?

MB: Oh, very good, I’ve got something I would like to stress out a little, I have heard quite a lot about this discrimination of races and so forth, well I was raised with Indian kids and we never thought of an Indian kid being any different than we were in any way.

JE: Ya.

MB: Really you didn’t have any opportunity to really socialize with them,Project as we did in a lot of instances between the white boys and girls, but there was absolutely no dissension of any kind between them and I went to school with some Indian kids and they were pretty smart kids. JE: Uh huh. Society MB: Talking about Indians, this boys that I have, that’sHistory only two or three instances I know two or three Indian boys that were scholastically competent, and they went through and then there was few that went to college we had a college in the country at that time called Carslyle College, which was an Indian College, and I assumeOral that they went there without any charges.. JE: Ya. Historical MB: I am sure it was run by the Indian Department, I know of a couple of instances after a few boys got their degree and they started Out on some career and they wasn’t in that very long until they were back on the reservationHistory again. In other words their instinct of living as they were raised and as Indian history had always been they preferred that to continuing with a career, there is a as a matter of fact right to this day I still have got people that are acquaintances of mine that are my age or older now, and always had the highest respect for them and we were good friends. So when they talk about discrimination and some of this stuff that I can’t go along with at all.

JE: ChippewaForest people…Minnesota

MB: They had the same opportunity if they wanted to work as the white people did, the same opportunities that existed in those days were available to them just as well as it was for the white people.

JE: The Chippewa people too Marion have been, the people have gotten along very well with white people, and cooperated very well with white people. Even the history of Grand Rapids this has been true. 13

MB: That’s true, that’s true, they, I think I’ll have to say maybe, well I think that’s generally true with all the people, there was a closer relationship between people in those days because one of the reasons was that there was many many people that their primary objective was existence. And which made relations between people of all kinds in those days much more than it does today.

JE: There was a very basic trend of life.

MB: That’s right, but I worked in a couple instances, I worked with Indians in the mills that I referred to when I was a young man and they were good men, just as capable as any of the rest of us that were.

JE: Right.

MB: Speaking of the Indians, I had an opportunity as a young boy to get to know one of our more prominent Indians of the old days by the name of John Smith. NowProject John Smith was considered, historically as commonly known that many years ago I would assume that he was probably in the eighties and he alerted the white people in the Leech and Winnibigoshish area about a possible uprising of the Indians against the white’s. And he was considered a privileged character as far as the Indians were concerned because of the service Societythat he had given the white people and he was given privileges that none of the other Indians would get, because in those days it was against the law for the saloons to sell liquorHistory to Indians.

JE: Ya. Oral MB: But John being a privileged character that he was and he used to spend a lot of time, of course by the time I knew John he was an old man then, they had statistics showing that he lived to be 110 and 125 I don’t think anybody absolutelyHistorical knew, but he did undoubtedly maybe at least 110 years old before he died. I think he died in the late twenties. So he was comparatively an old man when I knew him as a boy. But he used to spend time in, well he spent his time in Deer River, Cass Lake and Bemidji,History and he could commute back and forth on the Great Northern in any of these towns and they never charged him any fare, and he could get, the bartenders were very liberal with him, anything he wanted to drink they gave him, of course ho would usually get enough so that when he was in town why by night he would be pretty well loaded. But he was never, he never caused any trouble, he was a very friendly sort of a man, an Indian and he was in particular a good friend of my fathers, my father had the lumber yard right down town which was just a fewForest doors from Minnesotathe saloons, and he used to come to my father’s office and my dad used to cater to him and he would see that John was pretty drunk and why he he’d put him in the horse barn and let him sleep it off. And one summer when I was just a small child why my mother relates this to me, I don’t remember it, I was home but of course I don’t remember it, but my mother woke up one morning in the summer and of course it was daylight, real early probably four o’clock in the morning and in their home from the bedroom to their living room was a bookcase was in view and on this bookcase was a mirror, on the top portion of it. Well my mother woke up one morning about four o’clock and happened to glance out toward the living room and lo and behold she see’s John Smith’s face in the mirror, and of course she became very

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scared and let a scream out of her, and my dad got up and here was John looking at himself in the mirror. Well what he was doing evidently the folks forgot to lock the screen door and he was pretty well loaded and what he was doing he was looking for my dad to see if he couldn’t put him in the horse barn to go to sleep. And he used to sit around on his haunches along whiskey row on the sidewalk; he smoked what we call kinney kinick. Kinney kinick is a tobacco that the Indians derived from bark off of a certain brush, they would dry this and they would smoke this.

JE: Oh.

MB: And if you smelled it you knew it was kinney kinick, it was entirely a different smell.

JE: Pretty strong stuff?

MB: Tobacco, you knew it was kinney kinick. But John would sit around on the sidewalk and smoking a stone pipe with his kinney kinick, and he kept it in a bag that was probably white at one time, but the days I used to see it, it was blacker than the ace of spades.Project

JE: Pretty dirty. MB: Ya, from just being dirty, and one of my friends who is still livingSociety today was raised in Deer River when I was, he always said John Smith’s nose always looked like raw potatoes, because he got so old the end of his nose just wobbled back and forth.History And another instance that I happened to know of, some of John’s experiences, he as I mentioned before, he got privileges from business people, saloon keepers and so forth that the others didn’t get, and he was well liked. But he had a friend in Cass Lake by the name ofOral Rod Johnson who was a druggist and John used to, I mean Rod used to give him a little bottle of alcohol once in a while. Well he come into the drug store one day and he wanted Rod to give him a bottle of alcohol and Rod could see that he was pretty drunk so he put water in the bottle and heHistorical gave it to John and John went out and he didn’t see anything of John for some time. And John used to bring him in deer meet or moose meet once in a while. So the next time he come in the store he had a package for Rod and he had a package, I don’t know if Historyit was venison or moose meat but one or the other, so he give it to him and then another occasion later on he come in the store and he asked Rod, “how was the meat Rod?” Oh, fine fine, ya horse meat.

JE: So he was getting even.

MB: So heForest was gettingMinnesota a little even with Rod, but another time he stepped off of the platform of the depot, I don’t think the train, evidently practically stopped, but he did step in front of the pilot on the engine and he got injured to some extent. So they Cook him on the train to Cass Lake to the Indian Hospital and he got to hospital why of course the nurses put him in bed but they hadn’t had him in bed very long and the first time they come in the room why he was on the floor, he wouldn’t sleep in the bed.

JE: Not used to that at all.

15

MB: No. Well as a boy, as I mentioned before what we called whiskey row which is the main Street coming in on highway 2 to Deer River now, that street was primarily saloons. There was a hotel, The Loyzel Hotel but it also had a saloon, and the Harriet Brothers store was on one end of the south side of the street and Wrightner store, grocery store was across the Street from it. Other than that the buildings that were on that street were all saloons, there also was a saloon in the Marr Hotel which was the big hotel in those days and they had the Kellier Hotel and the Everton Hotel, they all had saloons too. But we lived within, well right straight across, we weren’t over a half a block of whiskey row and of course actually whiskey row was off limits as far as he was concerned as a boy.

JE: Ya.

MB: I used to get there occasionally, well one experience I had as a young boy about, I think I was around ten years old, I sold Saturday Evening Post, and of course I would, especially in the spring of the year when the lumberjacks came down from camp and they were pretty flush with money and they were always very generous, and I would go down whiskeyProject row and sell Saturday Evening Post’s and I would sell quite a few and in most instances why the lumberjacks would give me a quarter or a half a dollar for a five cent Saturday Evening Post, and then give me the paper back. The lumberjack was a, from the time I was, I don’t think I was over six or seven years old probably when I had.tny first experiences of just seeingSociety the lumberjacks and how they always had a great respect for kids, and not only Historykids but also for woman. JE: Ya. MB: And they would never think of molestingOral a child or a woman. As an example I refer back to the time that my mother taught school in the Trout Lake area, and in the fall and the spring of the year well the only roads were the tote roads, and in the fall and the spring of the year they would be so muddy that it would be almost impossibleHistorical especially for a women to walk on. So it was not too far to the Great Northern Railroad track leading into Grand Rapids, so she would go up on the railroad tracks and walk in on Friday night. She had a Sister living in Grand Rapids and she would come and spend theHistory weekend with her family. And of course the lumberjacks did the same thing, I, it would be dark before she would get to Grand Rapids after school in the winter time and the same way getting back to her place where she boarded on Sunday evening. And my mother said that it never occurred to her that she would be molested, and one of the experiences that she had which was a coincidence as far as I was concerned also was that a conductor on the local train running into Grand Rapids used to tell his engineer on Friday evening if they were coming intoForest Grand Rapids)Minnesota if he saw that red headed school teacher walking to Grand Rapids to stop and to pick her up.

JE: Oh.

MB: Well that same conductor his name was Pat Daley was my first conductor on the M & R when I started with the M & R which I will mention later on, but that’s probably as good evidence as I tell you about personal way about the lumberjacks. And a lot of them of course it

16

would be the same lumberjacks year after year that would go up into the camps so we got to know each other on a first name basis.

JE: Uh huh.

MB: And as I said before they never, they were always very considerate and they liked kids. And talking about the lumberjack and his characteristics, I would like to emphasis at this time as you know from what I have said that the lumberjack was a very considerate, but he was a very honest sort of a man too. He would come to Deer River in the fall of year broke, left the harvest fields and probably spent his stake on a good binge, probably in Minot or Grand Forks or someplace like that and in those days the lumberjacks used to use the freight trains for their transportation a lot. It was nothing to see thirty or forty, what some people call them hobo’s well the hobo I would say was a man that didn’t do much of anything else but go from place to place and live off somebody else. But the lumberjacks, a lot of people used to use, and the railroads went along with it, they didn’t make any fuss about it, so they would come to Deer River in the fall of the year broke and a man by the name of Fred Bride who was a Projectvery good friend of mine from the time I was a small boy, in fact I said as a small boy I had two idles beside my dad and mother, was H. J. Baker who had a store in Deer River and Fred Bride who had a clothing store. And Fred used to trust these lumberjacks, he would outfit them for their winter work and put it on the books and in the spring of the year the lumberjack would comeSociety back to town, and the first thing he would do would be to get his check cashed and go down to Fred Brides and pay off Fred for his winter clothes and buy a blue sertige suit and aHistory white shirt and a hat and clean underwear, and shoes and stockings and go up to the barber shop, and in those days barber shops all had bath tubs. Oral JE: Ya.

MB: Go up to the barber shop and get a bath andHistorical shave and a haircut and head for the saloon or the sporting house. JE: Ya, ya. History MB: And that would continue until he was broke again and then he would go on the drive, the drives all started in the spring of the year and the drive was probably about as miserable type work, more so that the woods work because they had to work, well the early spring elements, you can imagine those freezing mornings and so forth and they were , their work was all connectedForest with logs andMinnesota the rivers so they would get wet and it was hard work, they used to use pike poles to keep these logs in stream and breaking log jams the hard way. So it was hard work, and they worked from daylight until dark.

JE: Right.

MB: But that would be, they would do that starting in early spring and the drive would probably terminate in Minneapolis possibly sometime the latter part of July or the first of August. And they would go thru the same routine that they would in Deer River when they came down with 17

their stake they would blow their stake the same way in Minneapolis, after that period they would head for the harvest fields and stay there until the harvest was over with and then the same routine and back to Deer River up in the camps, that was…

JE: Their regular route.

MB: Yes, their regular route, but as I say, the only incident that I ever heard of, we don’t think it was ever known though we just say it was a lumberjack or not, the only incident that I ever heard of up until I was a young man of any woman ever being molested was a rape case up in the Squaw Lake area, a school teacher. I remember her first name was Olga, but I don’t remember her last name, and they never did find him I don’t think and I am sure if they had he would have been either shot or hung right on the spot.

JE: Ya. You mentioned the houses of prostitution or sporting houses, how long did they last?

MB: Well there was only one in Deer River, a fellow by the name of JohnnyProject Welch started, built this, in fact my dad as I mentioned had the lumber yard and he did a lot of the building in Deer River in the early days and furnished the supplies for them, but he contracted Johnny Welch to build this house of prostitution and I as a boy got a chance, we would go down there with a grocery delivery rig. Society JE: Oh. History

MB: Because we were always, that was always a good way of getting at least fifty cents or a dollar because one of the prostitutes wouldOral see us, and again I’ll say they had, they liked kids and if they saw one of us why we were good for fifty cents or a dollar so we always strived to ride the delivery rig to the, and there was Only about oh I would say a quarter of a mile from down town Deer River. Historical

JE: Uh huh. History MB: I don’t remember the size of the building, but it must have, I would assume it had maybe ten or fifteen rooms, and of course they didn’t have any, it wasn’t modern in any way I am sure, they probably had a pump for water out doors, outdoor toilet facilities and so forth, so it’s just a shell of a building.

JE: Ya. ForestMinnesota

MB: But my dad built that building for Johnny Welch for eleven hundred dollars and he paid him off in gold pieces. But I don’t think it existed, it wasn’t legal I am sure at that time, but it was like a lot of other things in the old pioneer areas, things were tolerated by law enforcement that wouldn’t be tolerated in other parts. As I say I would assume that it was discontinued probably even before the saloons were outlawed in this region and they were outlawed because of provisions of an Indian Treaty, and that Indian Treaty was put into effect, that provision about no liquor was legally sold on reservations and they enforced this provision about 1914. And I 18

don’t think as I mentioned I think the house of prostitution discontinued before that, however that same man Johnny Welch, I happened to see him again in May later years and he started the same type of business up at the town of Craig on the M & R. With reference to the remarks I just made about Johnny Welch in Craig, I will come back to the story about my experience with the town of Craig as a train man conductor on the Great Northern, but I would like to make some reference again to Deer River. Deer River was always Known as the town of very very friendly people, I still to this day have a few friends that survived the time that are considered close friends and the people of Deer River were very loyal to the town and I was one of them, I always had a great admiration for Deer River and the people in it, and it was a good business town and I know in later years when I could appreciate the economy of an area, Deer River was know up until the time that the big mill and the veneer plant discontinued one of the best business towns in northern Minnesota. It was considered a better business town than Grand Rapids in those days. Well I mentioned these things that are not the most desirable maybe as far as morals were concerned, but that was the type of life that the men that I mentioned used and it was their life, and as I mentioned before they were even with some of their bad habits they were very honorable men in a lot of ways. The town reached its peak I would sayProject probably about 1918, 1919 and it had a population of about twelve or thirteen hundred people at one time and I think now it’s approximately eight hundred people. JE: Ya. Society MB: But still it’s still a pretty good town, business town,History and because it’s serves such a big area in the north western part of the county. But I enjoyed my life of course I had wonderful parents and. Oral JE: What caused the decline there Marion, when did these mills start closing down?

MB: The decline was caused by ceasing the operationHistorical of the mills.

JE: Oh. History MB: But I don’t remember now but I would say at one time that when the mills were all running full blast and incidentally they run day and night, all the mills did, well it would be those three, the sawmill, the veneer mill and the box factory. They run day and night, ten hour shifts six days a week, and I would say that just somewhat guessing that total employment at that time would he at least fiveForest or six hundredMinnesota men. JE: Now the closing of those mills Marion was pretty much in conjunction with the loss of the amount of pine or the lack of availability of the pine I would imagine?

MB: That’s right, that’s because these mills were, except the box mill, the box mill used mostly popple, as I mentioned before in the early operations popple was unheard of. In fact we didn’t have a lot of popple, the popple came in the burn over areas in later years, it’s a very fast growing tree in fact more popple has been grown in this area than was ever logged because as I said there is no market for it. 19

JE: No.

MB: Today that’s entirely different and I am sure that is going to be a great part of our economy in this area as a supplier for the paper mill, chip mills and so forth. But it didn’t, if it was there it didn’t have any market value at that time, in fact that’s why the mills closed because there wasn’t any more.

JE: Your life…

MB: Timber that was, that they could use.

JE: Your life was pretty much in connection with the railroad systems?

MB: Well the, my various association, I might go back to the, my understanding of the start of Deer River, and a little resume of the history of Deer River, there the Joyce Interests from Chicago started the enterprises in this area, the original enterprise was,Project it was the Joyce Pillsbury Company. The Joyce in the company was W. T. Joyce from Clinton, Iowa, and Mr. Joyce business there was he runs a string of retail lumber yards. JE: Now was this Joyce the old man or was this his sons? Society MB: This is the W. T. Joyce that I refer to is the fatherHistory of the two Sons Stanley and David Joyce who later inherited. JE: Okay. Oral MB: The Joyce Enterprises. But then, when they first started their operation the original plan was, well of course their plan involved loggingHistorical in the area north of Deer River and to do that of course they had to have railroad for transportation and the first plan was to originate their railroad in Cohasset. And they did, they built a right away approximately oh I would say eight or ten miles north of CohassetHistory and even laid some steel. JE: What happened there?

MB: But they run into some right away difficulties, and apparently they couldn’t come to any compromise with the land owner, a man by the name of Mr. Sirnins who was the General Manager Forestof the Joyce Minnesotaenterprises, or Pillsbury Joyce, decided that he wasn’t going to be held up for this and yet an alternative and that was that he move the operation to Deer River and timber operations north of Deer River at what they call, or which is Great Lake, and they run the railroad that far from Deer River and they established a trestle and a hoist at Great Lake and the logging that was done in that area, the logs were pulled into the Lake and then hoisted out of the Lake and on railroad cars and hauled to Deer River.

JE: Were these rustle cars that they used?

20

MB: They used rustle cars, a rustle car was a very unique type of car, and it never was condoned by the Interstate Commerce Commission who governed public transportation.

JE: Ya.

MB: But being it was their private railroad of course they had no jurisdiction over it, and this rustle car is a car with a set of, what we call, trucks or wheels on each end, but only long enough for one tier of logs. And the cars in later years the cars that hauled timber all had stakes, these cars didn’t have stakes, the logs were bound to the car by chains.

JE: Oh.

MB: But one reason for that was because so much of the timber was so large that it didn’t take many logs to make a car load. I know that as a boy and the school being close to the railroad tracks and the river why we would see these trains come into Deer River with the loads on and I personally remember some cars that five logs constituted a car load. ThereProject would be three bunk logs, two middle logs and a top log. And I don’t know definitely but I don’t think that in those days they cut timber less than a ten inch top, so there was a lot of big timber.

JE: Right. Society

MB: But in later years- when the M & R became a commonHistory carrier then they came under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission and these cars were outlawed, and then they used, but they used them for several years. Getting back to the development of the M. & R. railroad, it was as I mentioned the first legOral of the railroad went as far as Great Lake, and I might mention at this time right up here at Great Lake there is also in that area a Little Bowstring Lake and out of Bowstring Lake comes Bowstring River. Bowstring River runs thru Bowstring Lake, Big Sand Lake, Little Sand Lake and into the RiceHistorical Lake and from Rice Lake into Dora Lake. And there were some of the settlers that went into that area, especially those that went as far as Dora Lake. The railroad companies permitted these early settlers to put their supplies that they were taking with them upHistory to the area on these rustle cars. They put what little lumber they had across; there was only two bunks on these cars, there was no bottom just the two bunks. And they put quite a bit and there was some lumber on that and then piles whatever their stove or whatever they might have with them on these boards and when they got to the end of the railroad which was right there by Bowstring Crick, they would unload these things and put them in a boat and use boats to get to their destination up in the Dora Lake country. A few of those early settlers were peopleForest like the originalMinnesota Joe Locker, and the Wailer families, Christump are a few names that come to my mind right now. But then the railroad extended their selves up as far as Turtle Lake, and that’s where they established their second loading operation. The timber that they logged in. that area was put in Turtle Lake and hoisted out of Turtle Lake and down the railroad that way. And this kept progressing, the extensions kept going and which included White Fish, Fox Lake, the Headspurs, and hoist into these places, and Dora Lake, Dora Lake was the most, the longest because it was about seven or eight miles from the town of Wirt which is, was ever the line then into Dora Lake.

21

JE: Now were these hoists steamed operated hoists?

MB: They were steam operated, that’s right and they would used a winch with cable and of course the jammer or the extent booms as you might call them on the cable and the switch run the cable hoisting the logs and then loaded on the cars. And the first, the foreman of their first operation at Great Lake was a man who resided and raised his family in Grand Rapids by the name of Bill Hoolihan. Bill and I, after I come to Grand Rapids because of our common interests with the M & R got to be very good friends and I have always been a very good friend of his family, some of his children still live in Grand Rapids with their families.

JE: Ya.

MB: Another man that raised his family in: Grand Rapids who was connected with the Itasca Lumber Company was John Craig and John raised his family here. And he was a camp foreman and what we called a walking boss in the early days and one of his children was Walter Craig who was recent retired as Chief of Police of Grand Rapids. But then theProject railroad, I would say it was about 1909, you see first they went up to as far north, eighteen miles north of Deer River at what they called Jessie Junction, later called Alder, and then they established one line running north west from there to Wirt and Dora Lake as I mentioned and then about 1909 they continued the railroad to Bigfork. Society

JE: Uh huh. History

MB: And then about 1911 or 1912 they extended it to Craig, and to the best of my knowledge there was only one spur on the Bigfork line,Oral and that was called the Juniper Spur and I think it run into Busti Lake. Now there are two Busti Lakes up in that country and this is the one south of Bigfork. Historical JE: Okay.

MB: I don’t think the ItascaHistory Lumber Company had that operation and they put the line in, but I think it must have been another logging company that operated there.

JE: Would that be probably the Nemakeri operation?

MB: It could possibly be, I haven’t the slightest idea. ForestMinnesota JE: Okay.

MB: But I don’t think it was the Itasca.

JE: Ya.

MB: And then, as I mentioned before that the main line, the first line went eighteen miles north of Jessie Junction later became Alder and branched North West up to this town of Wirt. That was

22

eighteen miles from Alder or in other words thirty six miles from Deer River. And then oh I would say probably in 1915 they extended the main line up to about seven miles up north of Wirt to what they call Palmroy, and there was some logging operations up there. However the Itasca Lumber Company had ceased the operation as a logging company quite a few years. Before the railroad was discontinued.

JE: Oh.

MB: And there were many other logging companies that operated on the M & R, after they became a common carrier. I don’t know the exact date that they became a common carrier but I would assume that it was around 1909.

JE: Two questions then, when they become a common carrier, and then they have to come underneath the Interstate Commerce Commission?

MB: That’s right. Project

JE: And the second question is, Marion when did that line really begin?

MB: Well apparently I didn’t get my story too , I should have mentionedSociety that the operation at Deer River, the Itasca Lumber Company started I think about 1898, and then as I say the, one of the stories that goes with building this railroad is that Historythere is a bog north of Deer River, actually it’s still there however it’s not any near wet as it was then, but there was a sinkhole in it and of course they used gravel to build their right away or railroad base, the railroad bed as we call it. The gravel pit was six miles north of Deer OralRiver and then the gravel was hauled from there. And in this bog they run into what they call a sunken sand pit, that isn’t the right name for it, what it was is a condition where the bottom just kept going down, and in handling these cars and getting the gravel on the right a way for some reason orHistorical another two of the cars got away on them and to the best of our knowledge these two cars of gravel are still in this sunken pit. But as I mentioned there was thirty six miles from Deer River to Wirt and then expansion from Alder or Jessie Junction to the eventual endHistory which was Craig was forty two miles from Deer River or twenty four miles from Alder. So in other words and when the later operations, well I shouldn’t say later, these various timber operations as far as the M & R was concerned when they did become a common carrier and several logging companies started using them or using the facilities and the reason that they were able or that they created this later development was the demand for other timber other than pine, originally it was nothing but pine. ForestMinnesota JE: Ya.

MB: But then the market developed so that there was a demand for things like ties, tamarack, cedar poles, and mining timber, pulp wood and I mentioned once before popple became the specialty for the mill Mathborn, Hare and Ridgeway mill in Deer River. They were a pretty fair sized operation, they used about oh I would say five or six carloads with five or six thousand feet on each car load every twenty four hours.

23

JE: By 1910 or 1912 that Bigiork Craig area is being cut over pretty extensively isn’t it? From 1910 to 1912.

MB: It was cutover?

JE: Is being cutover, is being logged off pretty extensively at that time.

MB: As of now, yet you mean?

JE: No, as of 1910, 1912 period.

MB: Oh no, there was a lot of that timber that I just mentioned that had never been touched.

JE: I mean as far as the pine?

MB: Oh yes, as far as the pine was concerned, I am not familiar with theProject pine operations in Chat area, see the Itasca Lumber Companies logging operations were confined practically entirely to the main line and spurs that I had mentioned on the Wirt side, or the north west side. They had very little logging operation on the Bigfork side as I understand it, but other companies did come in there and they used the M & R for transportation and I should mentionSociety perhaps that the W. T. Joyce that I referred to is the owner of the parent company, the original company died I think about 1910 and his two boys Stanley Joyce and DavidHistory Joyce inherited the railroad, and it was always to my understanding that they had no interest in expanding the operation, that the timber market then was quite limited and they just visualized that the railroad being used for a limited number of years and then they disbanded. OralBut as I said this market developed and which put a demand on the M & R for hauling and it lasted a lot longer than they originally anticipated. In fact it operated until 1932. Historical JE: Now was that railroad the M & R or the M & O?

MB: M & RR Railroad. History

JE: Okay, Minneapolis.

MB: The initials stand for the Minneapolis and Rainy River Railroad.

JE: Okay.Forest Minnesota

MB: It never got anywhere’s close to either one of them.

JE: Why was that called the Gutten-Liver line?

MB: Well the lumberjacks used to say that the Itasca Lumber Company fed them so poor that the meat was like guts and liver. So that’s where it’s got its name and it had various names,

24

another one was Misery and Rough Riding as the initials indicated.

JE: No one would not suspect that because the lumber camps or logging camps usually fed extremely well.

MB: Well that wasn’t entirely true in the early days, that situation did get much better as time went on, but the real early days why I don’t think that we can honestly say that the lumber companies were too concerned about good food. But your right, in later years that was, in fact that’s as the demand grew for men in the woods, their skills, the men of course were the same men that went in the woods each year and they would pick the camp that the operator they wanted to work by the cookie and they knew the good cooks. And they would follow that same cook year after year.

JE: When did you start working on the railroad?

MB: Well I, I originally started in 1920, my dad was master mechanic Projecton the railroad and I used to do some ordinary work around the shops and the operation, and then I started getting a chance to be an extra brakeman occasionally. As I mentioned I got a chance to be a extra brakeman, especially in the winter time because at that time they run as many as three trains, and I might go back to the fact that at one Lime the railroad operation involved runningSociety trains day and night and it would be quite a number of trains. But the last years at the time I started the maximum was three trains in the winter and that was very seldom. AndHistory then at the last, well when I first went to work regular as any train man and conductor was 1923.

JE: Now was this the time that you wouldOral go up to Craig and meet this Johnny Welch that’s up again or?

MB: Ya it was at that time, right after that, Craig,Historical well let’s get back to when I started, as I mentioned 1923 I became first brakeman and an extra conductor. In the winter time we had an extra train, and I was conductor of it, the second train. And we used to haul as I said before all kinds of timber products,History and I think the railroad might be running today, possibly not today, but for many years more than it did if it hadn’t been, if they developed and constructed the highway from Marcell to Grand Rapids. And it made a shorter hauling route to the pulp mill in Grand Rapids, the paper mill and the mining operations. And also about that time trucks got developed so that they started using them for timber hauling, and that kept developing the truck operations kept improving and developing until they did all our business. So that’s why we discontinued. ForestMinnesota JE: What year did you discontinue?

MB: 1932 we tore up the steel in 1932, the steel was all used for scrap. One of things that I, hindsight’s always much better than foresight, but and I don’t know as I as an individual could talk much about it but, it’s too bad that at least a couple of Chose old engines that we used up on the M & R were not preserved, because they were, well you wouldn’t see one at all on the railroad anymore. The original engines were obtained from the Pennsylvania Railroad were engines a day are discontinued and remember this dates back to; their original operation was 25

started about 1898. But the engines were all scraped none of them were preserved. I have some pictures of the last engine that we used that I hope will be preserved and used historically in this area sometime. They are in the position of my son now, a dentist and they will be available if we ever have the right facilities to use them.

JE: Right.

MB: But, of course as a brakeman and conductor on the M & R I had varied experiences and I suppose one of the most unusual experiences were in connection with the town of Craig. The Craig was as I had indicated before our north terminal on that line. Arid in the twenties the Backus and Brooks which is now the Boise Cascade operation started their big operation in that area, in fact their headquarters camp, camp 29 was just two miles from Craig, and it was always quite characteristic of the Backus operation as to try and induce the type of things that the lumberjack liked primarily the prostitution and the saloons wherever they operated. They always used to say that Backus always had three crews, one working, one on the road and one drunk. And I saw a lot of evidence of the prostitution and the liquor end of it, Projectwe called it liquor, but it was moonshine, because this was during prohibition days and it’s unbelievable the things that occurred in that community, you wouldn’t think we had any law in the country from things I actually experienced myself.

JE: What kinds of things are you talking about? Society History MB: Well, let me go back at first to the start of Craig, there were two men, John O’Connell who was a very good old time logging friend of mine and Jim Reed who was another good friend of mine, they used Craig as a langind. And that is before Backus got into the area; however I want to refer to the fact that Backus operation neverOral logged or landed anything on the M & R, they had their railroad, it was just across, the right a way you could see if you looked from the top of the hill about a mile north of Craig and looked Historicaldirectly north it looked like one Continuous railroad, just the Bigfork River divided them. But there was never any connection. But this, I mentioned Jack LaSalle and Jim Reed, well Jim and Jack they didn’t go or condoned this type of thing, but they were helpless of the Backus influence, it prevailed and these cheap joints came in quite a number, I think thereHistory were at least ten or fifteen then of nothing but cheap moonshine joints and prostitutes doing business around there, and I refer to the fact that Johnny Welch established a place there and I will have to say that Johnny Welch was considered in the business he was a square shooter, and he never hurt anybody physically or cheated anybody in anyway, he was in his business he was pretty highly respected. And I will say from the time I was a kid Johnny WelchForest was alwaysMinnesota a good friend of mine, and he rode with us on the train a lot so I knew him, so did the whores. But a few of the incidents that I might relate, I remember one time this was on Christmas Day and on holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July we didn’t haul anything but the weigh cars which were cars that hauled freight in, and passengers, we didn’t haul any loads.

JE: Ya.

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MB: Because that because that enabled the crew to get back into Deer River so they could part of these holidays wit-h their families. Of course we were on a time schedule after the railroad became a common carrier it was required of them to establish a time table for the movement of the regular train, the extra train didn’t make any difference: but the regular train had and of course we, at this time I was working on the regular train, what we called the local. So we had according to time schedule we had to unload our freight and that’s all we had to do, so we had time to kill before we could pull out again. And there was a fellow by the name of Bob Pederson who is a brother of Ted Pederson our recent county commissioner succeeded by Malcom Cambell and Bob was a landing foreman for Jim Reed, he was a darn fine fellow, Bob and I were very good friends and he was a, in a way of a well I would say a more highly skilled lumberjack but he had characteristics that I just mentioned about what you would consider a good man and Bob was an exceptionally a good man, and he always used to help me unload freight well we had finished unloading the freight and we were standing there visiting and here comes four guys drunk, carrying a corpse, one in each leg and one in each arm and they were coming down the street. And they only had one road in Craig and that was nothing but a clay grade, there was no gravel on it, of course this was frozen then. They come down from oneProject of the joints towards the depot parading down this one road with this corpse, as I say one on each arm and on each leg singing and hollering. The reason that the corpse was, it was in a place run by the Smith Brothers and this fella had died with the DT’s during the night and they put him under a pool table because, they called the coroner but the coroner couldn’t get down thereSociety from International Falls. Now you must remember that this is in Koochiching County and he couldn’t get down because of snow storms so that meant that they just left the corpseHistory around there until he could get there.

JE: Oh. Oral MB: Another incident, I was a very good friend of a young priest in Deer River, it was Father Dan McHenry and he was a darn fine man and we were good friends. One of his obligations was to take care of the parishioners of his church alongHistorical the M & R, there weren’t many, there were just a few, but one of them happened to be Mrs. Cattina, the wife of the owner of the only store in Craig. And he rode with us on the train, this was his first trip on the train and that was one of the parish- tiers that he wasHistory going to take care of. Indecently in those days why the clergymen got free passes on Passenger trains, so they could come and go as they liked. But on the way up why I told Father McHenry what he might run into, because this was in the spring and roads broke up and there were a lot of lumberjacks hanging around Craig and of course the place was really jumping day and night. And I told him that it characteristic of the prostitutes, well I shouldn’t just say the prostitutes, it was quite an occasion train day everybody that was around usually cameForest to the depotMinnesota on train day. And it was quite an event for some reason or another and that included the prostitutes and whenever one of these people would see a clergyman wearing his clerics, collar or cloak or whatever you want to call it, why they usually especially if they had a few drinks under their belt which they usually did why they would make quite a fuss over these, this type of people, slobber around on them and tell them what good people they were going to be from now on and so forth which was a lot of bologna of course. But I related to some of these things that co.tld happen with Father McHenry. So when we got to Craig why sure enough there was the usual element around there and one of them started on him, well he politely left her, he had to go about two or three blocks to get up to this store where Mrs. Cattina lived,

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and to go there he had to travel just this one road, and of course these joints I referred to were along this same road and all they had was a board walk from the grade and there was a ditch, quite a deep ditch on each side of the road. When he got to these joints why he went from the road across td the boards, narrow board walk to get to the front door of the joint. And he was going by one of these joints, well the reason I observed this too is the same thing Bob and I had unfinished loading freight and we were just standing there, well I was curious also to see if anything else happened with Father McHenry. And sure enough across from one of these joint, and about the time he was in front of the joint one of these old bats came out of the door and she was drunk and she hit this sidewalk and it was slippery, and she no more than hit the sidewalk and she fell over backwards into the ditch and all she had on was a fur coat and shoes and stockings, and of course the fur coat flew open and what she was trying to do was make a dive for Father McHenry. As I mentioned before it was characteristic for them to make a fuss over somebody like that and that’s what happened. Well we did our switching in Craig and we were ready to leave and I was so embarrassed that I didn’t even want to go in the coach and talk to Father McHenry. But he was getting off at Effie which was the second station south from Craig, so I thought well. I will have to talk to him before he gets off the train,Project so S. went in and talked to him and Marion is my first name, ya but Brownie is my nick name and nobody ever called me anything but Brownie, but he always called me 4arion. Well he said Marion I certainly appreciate what you told me, but I didn’t believe that anything like that could possibly happen. Of course you’ll have to remember that Deer River was his first parishSociety and actually he hadn’t had too much experience in life of course. But that was quite a shock to him. History Was a man by the name McGuinty and they had a feud on for some years previous to the time they come to Craig, they were, I think they were both pinched myself, but they had a feud on and the reason for the feud as I understood it wasOral that McGuiney was had cried to make a prostitute out of Ed Cunningham’s sister, and so the combination of this feud was that one night McGuiney was in one of the joints arid Cunningham took it into his head that he was going to go up there and shoot McGuinty. And he went up there andHistorical he did, he supposedly they exchanged shots, McGuinty got shot twice in the stomach and I shouldn’t say McGuinty, Cunningham got shot twice in the stomach, and McGuinty was killed instantly and supposedly Cunningham was supposed to have reachedHistory around with his left arm because his right arm was, after he got shot he couldn’t use, he was supposed to have reached around with his left arm and got his gun and shot McGuinty and killed him instantly. I learned from an informed source that I know knew the circumstances that it wasn’t Cunningham that shot McGuiney at all; it was another party who had a feud on also with McGuinty and new that Cunningham. And McGuinty were going to have this altercation and he shot McGuinty with a rifle through the window. ForestMinnesota Also had a feud with this McGuinty, in fact he had hit him over the head in his joint with a big steel poker that they for the stoves in those days, and I saw McGuinty after that and he had the most awful looking head that you ever saw. What you could see of it, most of it was bandaged. But anyhow he really set me straight on what actually happened there. Well they called the doctor from Deer River and the M & R that I worked on had what they called a motor car, motor car run on the rails and it held ten passengers, in fact: my dad’s first job on the railroad was running that motor car. Well they called this motor car and a doctor up there to take care of Ed, Dr. Minor was the doctor and he got up there and he diagnosed the situation that he couldn’t

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possibly live any length of time and he bandaged him up and give him some sedatives and said he probably last until morning. Well, these lines that I mentioned on the M & R we would run one on the work line on Monday and Wednesday and Friday, and the Craig line Tuesday’s, Thursday’s and Saturday’s, and this happened on a Craig train day but it was after we had left, and you might say that the road was impassable, there is one road that I referred to that come into Craig was nothing but clay and it was impassable. And as I mentioned Doc took care of Ed, but the next train day we come down and if they don’t have Ed on a stretcher still alive and for us to take to Deer River and then he was to be met at Deer River and taken to the Grand Rapids Hospital. So we put Ed on the train and this coach was, we had that was another thing that was obtained from the Pennsylvania railroad it was an old combination passenger and mail coach, of course we used it for baggage mail and passengers and then we had at least sometime one and occasionally two more coaches when there were a lot of passengers like in the spring of the year. And there were some rods that extended in the, from the ceiling in the baggage section and we had some ropes there and I thought, and the track is ways rough, but much rougher in the spring of the year, and I thought that the jar from the car that might be less if we would suspend Ed on this cot with some ropes. So the brakeman Bill Lukar who was breakingProject for me then, we put him up there but Ed said that would never work, it was worse than being on the floor of the car.” And they sent a fella along with him with a pail of ice chips and he would give Ed one of these ice chips every once in a while to keep his fever down. And we had a hill south of Bigfork that we would stall on occasionally and I because we had Ed on the train thatSociety day I was very apprehensive about stalling on that hill that day, I said “of all days we don’t want to stall.” So I Cold the engineer I said, “If you have ever made PinesHistory Hill make it today.” But don’t you know it stalled. So it took us from two thirty in the afternoon to ten o’clock that evening, forty two miles to get to Deer River, and Ed never let one whimper out of him that time. I will have to say that as a fellow to me Ed was a pretty likeableOral sort of a fellow, of course I didn’t know his occupation, but he was to talk to a nice sort of a fellow. Well in Deer River they had a, you have to remember this was in the Spring of the year and of course during the day it would thaw and at night it would start freezing, by the time we gotHistorical into Deer River the yard of the depot was frozen and of course it had been cut by vehicles in there and oh they cut it up, but it froze again by the time we got there. To meet him they had a fellow by the name of Claude Merrick who was a dreyman in Deer River thenHistory and he had a Model T flatbed truck, nothing but the flatbed, and of course you can imagine what the springs were like if any, and they put Ed on that with his cot on there and that’s the first whimper that Ed let out of him, when Claude started that truck across that frozen ground why he started yelling. And with Claude on his way to Grand Rapids there is a, that was in the days of the old road from Deer River to Grand Rapids and four miles, four and a half miles east of Grand Rapids was what we call Wellers Spur. Well there was a portion of the road that Forestrun on the northMinnesota side of the Great Northern from Wellers Spur for about a mile a mile and a half then cross the track again, and that portion of the road was impassible. So Claude got up on the railroad right away and went along the tracks to get to this next crossing. Well to end the story as far as Ed’s concerned I came to Grand Rapids as I mentioned before 1933 about, I think it was about 1935 or 1936 I was standing out in front of what is now Harbens store, and who comes up to say hello to Brownie to me but Ed Cunningham, I certainly didn’t think I would see Ed Cunningham again the day we brought him down on the train. So another thing that was characteristic about Craig of course it was in prohibition days I mentioned, oh I might mention that we used to haul oh practically by the carload, it wasn’t brown sugar, it was some

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type of hard sugar that felt and handled more like a bail than a sack of sugar, and raisins, that’s what they made the moonshine out of; and the going price for moonshine I know at that time to these joints was from the moonshiner was four dollars, four and a half dollars a gallon. We had one moonshiner up there that was better than the rest of them and he would get five and a half six dollars for his, but his clientele were more or less the business people, the loggers and people like that. Around the area.

JE: It wasn’t the regular whiskey bar?

MB: The joints wouldn’t buy from him; he even used to make Brandy. In fact I tasted some of his Brandy and I’ll have to say it was pretty good stuff. But as I mention it was in prohibition days and naturally you would think there would be some law enforcement, but it wasn’t very evident I’ll tell you, there was doggone little law enforcement. In fact one of the other things that I have heard; now I didn’t see this or I can’t verify it definitely, but I got it from a good source. There was a character up there and it so happened that I knew who he was, as a small boy in Deer River he used to hang around the saloons, and my dad always saidProject at the time that he was no good, but again he was the kind of individual that seemed very friendly, I know as a kid he used to be friendly with me and his name was Mike McClusky. And it was somewhat commonly known that Mike used to occasionally get one of these poor drunken lumberjacks and knock him over the head and clean him and then put him through the ice in the river,Society but as I mentioned I can’t verify, I didn’t see it, but another thing that they used to do, the way they operate d there they had a going agreement with the bartender in the Historyevent that the federal men would come down it’s seems as though the local enforcement officers didn’t pay much attention to the place, but occasionally the federal officers would come down and close these joints up. And they would put their official sign on the door. But theyOral had a going standing agreement the owners and the bartenders, that the bartender would say that he was the owner, well naturally they would arrest him and take him to Duluth and they had a standing agreement that he got five dollars a day for tending bar and he also got five dollars a day forHistorical sitting in jail in Duluth. And those feds wouldn’t be at the top of the hill about two miles out of Craig until there would be another bartender in these joints, the sign on the door didn’t mean a thing, and that’s the way they operated. I think that CraigHistory at least in my book, I called it the hell hole of the United States and places like International Falls and Hayword, Wisconsin were quite notorious in the old days, and Deer River as a saloon town, they couldn’t hold a candle to it, to the rottenness of that place of Craig. These of course are actual facts.

JE: We will back up here for just a moment Marion and go back to the Deer River area and we want to talkForest I believe withMinnesota someone about the railroad trestle there and the capacity of the mill that you know a considerable amount about.

MB: Well actually I referred to Deer River as originating in Deer River; technically it originated on White Oak Lake about a mile and a half south of Deer River. And in the early railroad days why before the sawmill was established there the logs that came down the M & R were dumped into the White Oak Lake and White Oak Lake was connected with the Mississippi River which runs parallel with the lake, just a matter of half a block in a lot of cases, and what: we called cut offs were established between the lake and the river and the logs were secluded from the, a lot of

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logs from the lake into the river and the origin al logs before the sawmill was established went down the Mississippi River on the drives to the mills in Minneapolis, and there is some evidence of activity, the activity in that area by the fact that there’s a few pilings left of the three trestles that were run out onto the lake. These trestles had the railroad tracks on them of course and they shoved the loaded cars out on these trestles to dump the logs. As I mentioned the sawmills to the best of my knowledge it was established about 1904 and in those it was considered quite a large mill, it had a band saw, a carriage and a band saw at that time had a double cut, one cut on each side, but in later years the mills discontinued those because they didn’t make the best quality of lumber, there was some variation in the dimension. And the mill had a capacity of approximately eighty to one hundred thousand feet every shift, which was a ten hour shift or other words approximately two hundred thousand feet every twenty four hours six days a week. And of course all you have to do is use your pencil and paper and you can see how many feet of logs that took for a season, the season would be about from April to November. At that time, that period of time the sawmill industry was pretty much confined to Cloquet, Virginia had the largest operation, in fact it was known as the largest operation in the United States. They were accredited with making a million feet of board feet of lumber a day in Virginia.Project Another town was Cass Lake, Bemidji and Crookston, they were the principle sawmill towns, including Deer River. The mill run until about 1919 when the last run was made and that was only a three week run. They had accumulated enough dead heads that were taken from White Oak area and the Mississippi area to run the mill for three weeks. Society

JE: Ya. History

MB: Getting back to the M & R I would like to relate some of my more pleasant experiences which were many, I established a good manyOral friendships on the railroad doing business with the loggers and the merchants and the various residents of the area who used our railroad for their freight, for transportation, so I established some very fine relationships with these different people. And I would like to mention some of themHistorical and how I happened to know them and who they were.

JE: Okay. History

MB: The loggers, well we will start on the south end of the railroad, well to get this thing straight a little bit I have got to mention. The fact that it was sixty two miles of main line, that’s even up to the time that we ceased operation. We had twenty nine passing tracks or side tracks they are commonly called and spurs, and they weren’t all active all the time and in later years some of themForest became Minnesotavery inactive. But the first one going north would be popple and the fellow by the name of John Anderson whom I knew very well in logging there, there were others too. Oh I made a mistake there, there was a spur at Reeds landing, that’s only four and a half miles north of Deer River, a man by the name of Reed many years ago established a buying operation for timber at this siding, he was also quite prominent in politics and he was a member of the school board in Deer River I remember as a child, and the next one was popple I referred to that and John Anderson the one next to that was McGrays Landing and the Jack O’Connell that I referred to logged at Craig in later years and had a landing there, and the next one was Suomi, and Suomi being a Finnish Community and let me mention just for a moment about the

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development of Suomi and Jessi Lake. That was established by the fact that the Itasca Lumber Company created a Land Department which consisted of their own cutover land that they actually owned, in some instances loggers buy just the stumpage, and in this case why they bought the land too. And they started this land department and they devised a plan to get people to come up there and buy that land on forty years contracts, and many of these people were immigrants from Finland and from some of the other European countries. The Suomi area as the name indicated was entirely Finnish people, many of the people that reside there now are descendents of the people that, and this took place I think about 1914 or 1913 that they first started this land. And the farms that you see primarily in the Suomi and the Jessie Lake area are all farms that were nothing but raw land and developed by these people that immigrated up there at the time that I am referring to. They became very sound and developed communities, very fine people. And talking about that, the farming, it’s been my experience in my lifetime to see the area from the time of its abundance of virgin pine and nothing but timber to quite a substantial development of farming in the area and however eighty or one hundred twenty acres at any time would have been a good sized farm, and still is in this area. But it did maintain good level of farming, potatoes, dairy and so forth, but now with the developments inProject farming this type of operation can’t compete, well a lot of this land is going back to timber. So I have seen original timber land, extensive farming land and now quite a development of the land going back into timber which is quite an experience. Society JE: Whole cycle. History MB: Getting back to the operators and people that I established this friendship with doing business with I guess I the last one I mentioned was Suomi and the next one was Collins, a fellow by the name of Keith Willis who wasOral a lifelong friend of mine was the principle logger there, and John Givesary at Alder, John later moved to Floodwood with his family, John was a very high caliber fellow and on the work line, starting at Turtle Lake was John who had a store at Mack which is just a short way to Turtle Lake Siding.Historical And then the next would be H. J. Witt, H. J. Witt was a quite a large operator, he did principally buying, he would finance loggers and he was more of what we call a buyer than a logger, he used to hire, contract other people to do his logging. But he had a veryHistory prosperous business up in that area and Herb operated on most of sidings on the Wirt line except Wirt itself. And at Wirt which was the end of the line in my time with the M & R there was Ed Voigt and Jay Gringle, not Ed but Edminister, I forget his first name now, they were all men I dealt with for many years, and all good operators. And on the other line it was Vic and his family still operates a farm that they developed in the Marcell area, Vic was a hard worker and a good logger. And then get up to Bigfork it was Jim Knight, Ed ErskineandForest his son, JimMinnesota Reed, and oh Gus Westrak I must not forget to mention Gus, Gus was one of the bigger operator’s in, after the H & R went out he went over to Pine Island and logged that area for the M & O Paper Company, Then from there he moved out to Washington. The last I heard of Gus he had an apartment building, I think he has now passed away. And then, Gus operated on the Bigfork, Connors, Woodrow, and then at Effie the principal operator was Raslow, Hare and Ridgeway, a fellow by the name of George Pool was their superintendent. They landed millions of feet of popple that they used in the Deer River mill. At Effie they had two sidings. And another operator in that area was a good friend of everybody and we all like was Sid Williams, Sid was quite a character himself too, one characteristic he had was quite a

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voice and whenever he said anything you could hear him for a mile away. Talking about characters, some of these people I just referred to, I am not saying it in a discouraging way, they were characters in a very friendly way, they liked good times and they could relate lots of stories and so these few fella’s that we did business with consistently on the road used to come back and ride with us in the baggage car and of course that would be a story telling session, and Sid was one of them, others were Jack O’Connell, Mike Guthrie, Vic Lofgren, Ed Erskine, Oscar Peterson, just a few of the names that come up off the top of my head, when they would get back in the baggage car we would have some great sessions of what you might call genuine B.S. But other people that I did a lot of business with like the store keeper, and there were other loggers too that I am sure I haven’t mentioned that were fellas that I did a lot of switching for and freight hauling for and so forth, and then all in all there were they were all very very fine men. Some of the class store keepers I would like to mention are Mr. and Mrs. Rikkala of Suomi, C. E. Newstrom at Marcell, Harry and Alice Olson at Marcell, Pete Evenson at Bigfork, and I think of Pete Evenson, Pete operated and went to the Bigfork area as quite a young man, and he has a son, not a son but a Grandson who is living in Grand Rapids now Ron Evenson who is business manager for Leisure Hills. I knew his mother when she was a clerk at Harriet’sProject store and I was just a real young man. It is quite an experience to see Ron here at Rotary meetings and reminisce with him about his Grandmother who I knew as a boy. Others that, some lighter storekeepers was C. E. Holycross and his son Scott, Ward Johnson at Effie, this was at Bigfork, Holycross, Ward Johnson at Effie, J. Albert Anderson at Effie, J. Albert is still somewhatSociety active in that area, Frank Cattina, who is now deceased. And incidentally Frank established in the twenties what was a very plush resort on Deer Lake, Frank himself told meHistory he spent forty thousand dollars on establishing that resort. Frand was another fine fellow to do business with. H. .J. Witt, who I mentioned before, he had the store at Jessie Lake, A. F. Hide at Spring Lake and George F. Minister at Wirt. Now these men are reallyOral pioneers of the area and they are primarily responsible for Commerce and the economy of the area, when I say names I also refer to the loggers that I mentioned, and. they were without exception some of the finest people that you could do business with, which characteristic ofHistorical people in Business in those days. They had a lot of consideration for others and they went a long ways to help people out that were in trouble financially or another way that they could. So my M & R experience was, the operating experience was really somethingHistory that I will always remember and these associations that I have referred to I will always stick in my mind, some of them I still have the privilege of having . To sort summarize and end our story about the H & R, we tore the steel up in 1932, and that was the last activity of the H & R, my dad was the last employee of the H & R, he was the master mechanic and they still had the engines there and according to Interstate Commerce regulations those engines had to be reported to them every so often, and that’s about all he did for the last few yearsForest he was there.Minnesota As I mentioned the last activity of the M & R was tearing up the steel in the fall in 1932, that was my last assignment as conductor I used to haul the loads of Steel in at night and bring the empties back and then they would load them during the day, my dad was in charge of that operation and to end my story I have referred to the fine relationship that I had with these people. I hope the story might be of some interest to people in the future and I appreciate the experience of having this interview with John Esse, and for that I will say goodbye.

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