BIRTH OF A RESORT TheThe ChaseChase HHotelotel and the Rise of Lakeside Tourism JOHN R. FINNEGAN SR. and CARA A. FINNEGAN WALKER NEWSPAPER northern Minnesota in 1922. Nearby, been served. Dancing, music, and pronounced it “One of the Chase family’s Isabel Lodge (built obligatory speechmaking made up the Grandest Events in in 1915) offered an additional 22 the evening’s program. The Dot Van A the History of North- guest rooms and a large ballroom orchestra came over from Bemidji, ern Minnesota.” On June 8, 1922, for dancing and other events. Like beefed up with a few additional play- nearly 400 guests came from all over an error-filled game of “telephone,” ers from Minneapolis.7 the state, arriving by train, car, and area newspapers variously reported State representative and local even seaplane to attend the grand construction costs of $100,000 and attorney Daniel L. DeLury set the opening and official dedication cer- $175,000.4 These details aside, it was rhetorical tone for the evening with emonies of the New Chase Hotel on certainly a place the likes of which his speech. Known since the old days the shores of Leech Lake. The hotel Walkerites had never seen. The as “Crying Dan DeLury,” a reference was touted as the future of Walker, Chases, who had for 20 years owned to the pathos-laden strategies he as large and modern as the vision of and run the more modest Hotel liked to use when defending clients its builders and proprietors, longtime Chase in downtown Walker, had re- in court, he both praised the Chases Walker residents Bert and Louisa ally outdone themselves this time. and challenged local citizens to do Chase. Local newspapers embraced “Complete in furnishings and their part. The Walker Pilot summa- it with all the fervor of small-town equipment, every room a glow of rized his remarks: boosterism, praising the New Chase light, beautifully decorated with pot- as “one of the finest and most up to ted plants, ferns and other embellish- Mr. DeLury gave an address that date hotel buildings in the Ten Thou- ments, and thronged with guests, the proved much more than a eulogy sand Lakes district of Minnesota” setting was complete last Thursday to Mr. and Mrs. Chase. He intro- and observing, “There is no chance evening for the dedication of the duced his remarks by paying them but what it will be one of the most New Chase,” reported the Walker the just tribute that was theirs. As popular summer hotels in the State.” 1 Pilot.5 The unofficial start of the day’s a fellow townsman he was fully Attempting to describe this new events came in the late afternoon aware of the trials that had to be civic gem, the Cass County Pioneer when that weekend’s most famous overcome and obstructions sur- observed, “It is difficult to adequately guest, H. W. Fawcett, landed his sea- mounted in order for the propri- draw a word picture of this palatial plane on Leech Lake and motored etors to achieve this, their greatest building and it would be still more over to the Walker city dock. Fawcett, desire. But now that we have seen difficult to describe the beauty of the the Minneapolis-based publisher of their ambitions crowned with interior. It must be seen to be ap- the well-known humor magazine success it behooves each of us to preciated.” 2 The Walker Pilot was a Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang, also emulate, according to our ability, bit more architecturally savvy: “The owned Breezy Point resort north of something that will also be for the great white building is situated right Brainerd. His presence—and signa- betterment of the town. on the lake shore and is an imposing ture on the June 8 registry as the sev- structure being of frame construction enth guest at the New Chase—served and finished with an exterior finish of for civic boosters as yet another piece John R. Finnegan Sr., a retired execu- 3 white Kellastone.” It had been built of much sought-after evidence that tive editor and assistant publisher of perpendicular to the shoreline to af- Walker had arrived.6 the St. Paul Pioneer Press, spent his ford every room a lake view. Each of The five-course banquet began childhood summers in Walker with his parents and grandparents, who the New Chase’s 64 rooms featured at 8 p.m. in the ballroom of the owned and managed the Chase Hotel. hot and cold running water and pri- Isabel Lodge, where dinner seating Cara A. Finnegan, a communication vate bathrooms with tub and toilet, for 159 people had to be repeated historian who teaches at the University certainly a luxury for travelers to three times before all guests had of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the author of Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs (2003). The luxurious New Chase Hotel on Leech Lake, about 1923, touted as The authors are father and daughter. “one of the most popular summer hotels in the State.” Summer 2009 273 MNHist_Sum09_inside_singlesREV.indd 273 6/23/09 10:45:16 AM AS SHE OVERSAW FINAL prepa- Chase met Louisa Hansen (he would rations for the evening’s events and later call her Lottie) shortly after he laid out the fashionable black dress moved to Wisconsin from New York. and beaded head wrap that she They were married in Kilbourne City would wear for the evening’s festivi- (now Wisconsin Dells) on January ties, Louisa Chase must have felt any- 2, 1887. To commemorate the occa- thing but celebratory. What should sion, they went to a local studio and have been a night of triumph for the sat for formal portrait photographs. family—Bert, Louisa and their four These show the young newlyweds as adult children, Isabel, Edna, Loren, rising members of the middle class, and Natica—could only have been wearing well-made attire and the bittersweet. Loren was dead. Losing calm, serious expressions required a months-long struggle with pneu- for so auspicious an occasion. In the monia just one week earlier, 21-year photographs the Chases appear to be old Loren was the one for whom this good citizens well positioned in their giant venture had been undertaken local community. Maybe they were. and to whom it would have been But these portraits do not exactly tell given upon his parents’ retirement. Lewis and Louisa Chase, known as the truth. In a practice quite com- While the newspapers did not report Bert and Lottie, in the 1920s mon in the late-nineteenth century, that the Chases were heartbroken photographs of their heads were su- and grieving on the night of the more consumed with anxiety and perimposed on an artist’s rendering opening, stories on Loren’s death grief than flushed with civic pride. of other, better-dressed bodies. As a the week before had noted the tragic Our interest in the Chases and result, the portraits show the Chases irony: “He was very much interested their contributions to the early tour- not as they actually were, but as they in the New Chase which his father ist industry in northern Minnesota wanted us to see them. The newly- had planned and builded [sic] ex- is both historical and personal. The weds, we might say, adopted a “fake pressly for him. His death is a ter- rise of the resort industry is an impor- it till you make it” approach, using rible blow to the parents as he was tant story for both the region and the modern technology to accomplish their only son and they would never state; at the same time, this is also a visually what they would only be able have gone into the new hotel propo- family history. The grandson of Bert to accomplish literally many years sition had it not been expressly for and Louisa Chase, co-author John R. later. While the portraits are fakes his financial good and pleasure.” 8 “Jack” Finnegan Sr. spent his child- in one sense, they are actually quite Indeed, Lewis Woodruff (Bert) hood summers in the late 1930s and truthful in another, for they illustrate and Louisa Chase were 61 and 59 early 1940s working and playing at the that from the very beginning of their years old in 1922, hardly the mo- hotel his grandparents had built and life together Bert and Lottie Chase ment in life to undertake such a bold his parents managed. The story told were always on the lookout for a way economic venture. By 1922 they had here combines archival research with to get ahead. been in the hotel business for 21 personal recollections to communicate They got ahead in earnest in 1898 years. They had raised four children the role the Chases played in the rise when they arrived in the new town of and were grandparents four times of Minnesota lakeside tourism. Walker, some 66 miles north of their over. They were responsible for the home of Brainerd, where Bert had livelihood of dozens of employees, co-owned a saloon. Incorporated in and they were up to their ears in debt. BERT CHASE WAS SMALL in stat- 1896, Walker owed its very existence Now they had to figure out a way to ure but he had big ambitions. His to the state’s burgeoning white pine make the New Chase work, without wife, Louisa, a woman of strong char- industry and the logging camps and Loren. During the laudatory orations acter, was determined that Bert’s am- mills it spawned.