Presque Isle River, Michigan

Lake Superior Chippewa historical mural

1,910 miles

March 31 – I’m in the Ottawa National Forest, having recently crossed the Montreal River, at a crossing for a French-named river), and I’m wondering why I’m surrounded by names from eastern Canada.  Did the early explorers & namers have so little knowledge of this area and so little imagination that they just repeated names from the east?  I rather like the French term “presque isle” or “presqu’île”.  Literally, it means “almost island”, so it is used to mean “peninsula”.

This area was historically part of the territory of the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa, which had twelve bands in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

old railroad bridge over the Presque Isle River

This river has many small & interesting waterfalls, cascades, & rapids, but not here.  Here, where Michigan Highway 28 crosses the river, is the blankest part of any regional map.  Elsewhere, waterfalls and campsites and hiking trails and visitor centers and scenic overlooks dot the cartography.  Here the river slowly winds its way to other, more precipitous drops.  Parallel to the highway is an old railroad.

potholes & whitewater on the lower Presque Isle River

Portions of this river are considered to be the most challenging whitewater in Michigan, if not in the Midwest. This river is listed as one of the ten North American rivers that "defines the outer edge of contemporary whitewater paddling."

image:  Google Street Views

whitewater image & info:  http://www.michiganpaddlesports.com/html/presque_isle_river.html

Ironwood-Bessemer, Michigan

city mural of Ironwood miners

1,896 miles

March 30 – After crossing the Montreal River which is the state border, I‘ve arrived in Michigan!  My stopover is between the towns of Ironwood & Bessemer, and the metal-related names drew my attention to the mining history of the region. 

Ironwood was named for James Wood, an iron mining captain.  His boss Frederick Rhinelander named the mining camp and the developing town in honor of his captain, adding “iron” as if it was Wood’s nickname.  A small park at the corner of North Suffolk and Fredrick Streets is also named in honor of James Wood.  Fredrick Street was named after Fredrick Rhinelander for whom Rhinelander, Wisconsin was also named.

Ironwood has one high school, officially named Luther L. Wright High School, but informally called Ironwood High School. Their mascot is the "Red Devils," historically referring to the miners who got covered with red dust from the iron ore.  Unfortunately the mascot has morphed into a fierce Satan.

The city population is about 98% white, with ancestral ethnicity declared as: 25% Finnish, 17% German, 15% Italian, 13% Polish, 10% English (probably many Cornish) and 10% Swedish.

Ironwood is famous for its Cornish pasties, which appeared in Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods.  The premise of the story is that the gods of Scandinavia came to North America with their immigrant believers. They all walk around disguised as ordinary people.   The mysterious character called Mr. Wednesday is actually an old Norse god once known as Odin the All-father who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities: "gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon."  And Ironwood pasties are involved.

Bessemer Process for purifying iron to make steel

When Bessemer was platted for a new town in 1884, it was named after the nearby Bessemer Mine, which was named in honor of Henry Bessemer, a British metallurgist.  Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) was an English inventor, whose steelmaking process became the most important technique for making steel in the nineteenth century.

Bessemer’s process involved using oxygen in air blown through molten pig iron to burn off the impurities and thus create steel.  This made steel easier and quicker to manufacture, and revolutionized structural engineering. Bessemer also made over 100 other inventions in the fields of iron, steel and glass.

Unlike most inventors, Bessemer managed to bring his own projects to fruition and profited financially from their success.  In 1856 Bessemer first described his iron-purifying process to a meeting of the British Association in Cheltenham which he titled "The Manufacture of Iron Without Fuel."  It was considered so interesting and important that The Times newspaper in London published the article in full.  

Another inventor, James Nasmyth, had been working on a similar idea for some time.  He was a reluctant patentee, and was still working through some problems in his method.  When he heard Bessemer’s presentation at the British Association meeting, Nasmyth abandoned his own project.  Bessemer acknowledged the efforts of Nasmyth by offering him a one-third share of the value of his patent, but Nasmyth turned it down as he was about to retire.

cross-country ski trail

This area is known as Big Snow Country because of heavy snowfall influenced by nearby Lake Superior, and is often referred to as a snowbelt.  The area is now known for its downhill skiing resorts as well as its cross-country skiing resorts and snowmobiling trails.

info:  Wikipedia.com, Amazon.com

ski trail image:  http://wxpr.org/post/snow-continues-pile-northern-wisconsin-and-upper-peninsula

Mar 29 - A Child's Spiritualist Funeral

On October 26, 1867, Hattie Blakely wrote to her family:  “One of the scholars died last week.  She was from the grammer school.  She was buried with spiritualist rites.”

What an interesting topic!  Why couldn’t she say more?  She obviously did not know the younger child and she was not included in those mysterious burial rites, but it was undoubtedly the talk of the school for a while.

Spiritualism is a belief that spirits of the dead have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living. The afterlife, or "spirit world", is seen by spiritualists as a place in which spirits continue to evolve, and thus can provide useful knowledge to living people about moral and ethical issues. 

Spiritualism developed in the 1840s, in English-speaking countries, particularly among the middle and upper classes.  American Spiritualism started in upstate New York, just over the border with Rutland County.  The beliefs gained followers through periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and missionary activities of accomplished mediums. 

Many prominent spiritualists were women, and like most spiritualists, supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage.  However, many of the reformers, including the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, considered the movement to be a superstitious cult, and avoided associating with it. 

This is the prosperous middle class and the educated culture of the Blakely family at this time, and it is reasonable to expect that some relatives or family friends would explore spiritualism, but we have seen no other mention of these beliefs in the Blakely family letters, or of spiritualist people they knew.  Not even their gossipy and opinionated grandmother Sarah Smith Horr had anything to say on the subject. 

anti-Spiritualist pamphlet

And yet it was a controversial topic of public discussion at the time.  Here is a pamphlet that shows a Christian-based claim that spiritualism is a form of witchcraft.

mourning mother

The appeal of spiritualism was strong.  Many families were grieving the death of a loved one, from diseases and accidents and the American Civil War.   Grieving parents of children who died hoped that they could communicate with their child, and the child could continue to grow and develop on a spiritual level.

What would those spiritualist funeral rites look like?  The Spiritualists' National Union of Great Britain has published this modern description, which sounds very compatible with the liberal religion of the Blakelys, but with expectations of future communication with the person who has “passed on” to another realm.

early Spiritualists

Funeral Services the Spiritualist Way

“The service is a time for remembering and paying tribute to the life and actions of the deceased. It is a time to celebrate their life on earth, so that those who remain remember them with joy and thankfulness for the shared memories.

“The Spiritualist Service emphasizes the continuation of life in another sphere of existence beyond this earthly realm, and that the death of the physical body is merely the shedding of a mortal garment that has served its purpose.

“The Spiritualist Service may be personalised for those who would wish a non traditional religious service, most Spiritualist Ministers and Officiants will fit in with the wishes of the deceased and our Services do not include what many see as orthodox religious language.

“All services are conducted in a Spiritual manner with both dignity and respect. Types of ceremonies offered include Burial, Cremation, Scattering of Ashes & Memorial Services. “

spiritualist images:  http://www.fst.org/150home.htm

The Spiritualists' National Union:  http://www.snu.org.uk/community/ministers/funerals.html

Saxon, Wisconsin

1,882 miles

Mar 28 – Saxon Falls is a little ways off the road, but it is a beautiful waterfall, and wonderfully symbolic.   The falls are large and complicated.  They are located on the Montreal River, which forms part of the border between Wisconsin and Michigan, so the falls are technically in both states.  

In the spring, meltwater gushes over 3 channels at this upper drop, and there are more drops nearby.  The lower drop is best seen from the Michigan side, although it is more difficult to get to.  In other seasons, much less water flows, but it is still beautiful.  

Saxon Homestead Farm, a 5^th-generation family partnership, has been practicing spring seasonal calving and rotational grazing for decades. The family’s methods are modeled after those used by New Zealand and Irish dairy farmers.  Saxon Farm Homestead participates in the University of Wisconsin’s Discovery Farms Program to promote improved farming practices.   I’m surprised to read this.  I thought that all farmers were now using artificial insemination to time their animal births for spring. 

The spring workload at Saxon Homestead is intense, as approximately 125 cows and heifers calve each month during March, April, and May.   It takes the whole team of family members to care for all those newborns!

Saxon Falls:  http://www.gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/saxon.shtml

Saxon Homestead Farm:  http://fyi.uwex.edu/discoveryfarms/2012/04/discover-spring-is-calving-season-at-saxon-homestead-farm/

Ashland, Wisconsin

1,868 miles

Mar 25 – Eight Indian nations have lived here on Chequamegon Bay, including refugee Petun, Huron, and Ottawa, who were fleeing wars and Iroquois invasions from the East in the 1600s.   Later, Ojibwe people came here to trade, and they came to dominate the region.  Four national flags have flown over the area around Ashland: Spanish, French, English and American.  It is an area of much cultural mingling.  Nowadays the racial makeup of the city is about 87% White, 7.5% Native American, and 4% from two or more races.

Ashland, and surrounding Ashland County, has become has become a public art destination.  The 8-block Main Street business district, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, contains 13 public murals depicting actual people, places, and events from Ashland County’s history.  (Others can be seen from Butternut to Madeline Island, and tourist maps show a scenic map to follow to see them all.  The one seen in Iron River may be an outlier of this group.)  

storefront mural

Local mural artists Kelly Meredith and Susan Prentice Martinsen used an art technique that creates the optical illusion that the painted people & objects are really 3-dimensional.  Trompe-l'œil is French for "deceive the eye".  Ashland also built a Mural Brick Road as a fun promotion to bring attention to the historical murals

Book Across the Bay

Ashland hosts an annual winter event called Book Across the Bay, a 10 kilometer cross-country ski and snowshoe race.  It is a unique winter event, because it follows a route not on land, but over the frozen surface of Lake Superior, the world's largest lake.  The course, which is groomed for both classic-style and skate skiing, starts in Ashland, and ends in nearby Washburn. 

ice luminaries on course

The event is held at night, and the course is lit by up to 1,000 candles in ice luminaries that line the entire route.  The word "Book" was also used as a pun in the title because in 1996 the race was initially organized as a fundraiser for the public library.

info: Wikipedia.com

bay image:  http://www.northland.edu/news/researchers-reveal-vulnerabilities-surprises-of-chequamegon-bay/

mural walk info:  http://www.ashlandwihistory.com/mural-walk.html

county murals:  http://www.muralbrickroad.com/

Book Across the Bay image:  http://batb.org/

Mar 26 – Revisiting the Maple Dilemma

I was so bothered by the lack of information available about the community life of Maple (March 22) and my own response to it, that I couldn’t let it go.  I e-mailed the chairman of the town council (who includes “finn” in his e-mail user name) trying to get more information and more of a sense of the community.  I heard back from Jim Pellman, a man who calls himself the “town historian” in quotes, and apologized ahead of time for being long-winded.  I see him as a long-time resident who knows many interesting facts and stories about the community but does not have enough of an audience.  So now I have plenty of interesting information & insights into the community.

Maple has become a bedroom community for the Twin Ports, about 15 minutes away by car.  According to Jim Pellman, “Many businesses, transportation industries, hospitals, universities, professional offices, etc., serve as employers for those who enjoy the rural setting here in Maple and nearby.”  Lake Superior is a dominant factor in all of their lives, both for work and recreation. 

Many of the early farming families were of Finnish ethnic origin, and Finnish could be heard in the local co-operative stores and in the churches up into the 1960s.  Two churches are still active in the community, both founded by Finnish settlers. 

The Widdes Farm and Feed business has new owners, and is now called Maple Hill Farm & Feed.  The area was once full of small dairy farms, but with changes in the dairying industry all but one of these farms have left dairying.  Some farmers switched to beef cattle, but many of the farms now grow hay and alfalfa for those still in the cattle and dairy business.  Some logging continues in the many forests in the area. 

Sundown Truck Stop and Restaurant, which I showed on my blogpost, was a Maple community hub for generations, but went out of business a couple of years ago.   Other businesses in town have closed over the years, but now they are used for the town government services.  Lind Well Drilling, Maple Hill Bakery & Restaurant, and EMJ Auto Repair have become the Fire Hall, Town Hall, and Town Garage. 

The centralized regional high school for 11 towns, which Google Street Views shows under construction, is now complete and teaching over 400 students, preparing them for “the rigors of college as well as direct training for careers in the trades.”  The new building looks stark & prison-like in this picture, but the school website shows a range of lively activities going on.

The railroad track which ran parallel to US Highway 2 has been pulled, and the railroad bed is now a part of the Tri-County Corridor which serves off road vehicles and hikers year round.

Finnworks Gallery used to be a service station on Highway 2 that was converted into Pellman’s art studio.  

GrizzWorks, also on Highway 2, is the workshop and display space for Justin Howland, a wood sculptor who specializes in bears of all types and sizes.   I imagine that these are chainsaw sculptures.  One 8-foot tall bear guards the entrance to his business.

It appears that Maple has been gentrifying and becoming more of an exurb of the Twin Ports.  I’m so glad that I got this chance to take a closer look at this living community.

Northwestern High School:  http://www.nw-tigers.org/northwestern-high-school

Benoit, Wisconsin

Benoit Cheese Shop

1,854 miles

Mar 25 – My stopover point today is a spot on US Highway 2 which is officially part of the tiny unincorporated community of Benoit, officially located within parts of the towns of Keystone and Mason.  The place was named for Antoine Benoit, a pioneer French settler.  Even though countless French explorers and trappers roamed this region, I suppose that only a settler gets his name attached to a place.  I wonder whether Antoine settled down to trade in liquor, since one of the few roads here is named Moonshine Alley Road.

Benoit cheeses

In this rural non-town, I was surprised to find a charming gourmet cheese shop!  Benoit Cheese offers 150 varieties of cheeses – everything from fresh curds to 16-year-old cheddar.  The shop also sells a variety of locally-made items such as honey, syrups, specialty meats, soaps, candles, trinkets, wine, and organic olive oil.  I wonder how this out-of-the-way little shop gets customers into their store.  They take orders by phone or online, so I could actually sample Wisconsin food this way!  So much for a nowhere stopover on the highway! 

info: Wikipedia.com & Google Street Views

Benoit Cheese:  http://www.benoitcheese.com/

Iron River, Wisconsin

1,840 miles

Mar 24 – The town of Iron River has about 1,000 people, with 15% of them living below poverty level.  It has an array of community services, but the people are very dependent on seasonal tourism to bring in money from outside.  

There are frequent weekend festivals highlighting a variety of local resources: cross-country skiing, ice fishing, golf on ice, a candlelight trek through the fish hatchery, & a chili feed at the VFW.  In July, there’s a blueberry festival – my chance to enjoy the blueberries I was yearning for in the town of Blueberry!

trompe l'oeil mural

Somewhere in Iron River, the town is making a valiant effort to turn a blank concrete wall into a picturesque small-town scene.  (No other info or mention was found online.)

One fun place to stop here is the Rustic Roost.  It’s a roadside café with tourist cabins and RV hook-ups.  

cozy tourist cabins

This old postcard shows the traditional line of cozy cabins for outdoor enthusiasts to use for a local home base. 

inside Rustic Roost cafe

The friendly service and the tasty food in the café were much appreciated by Corey James, the bacon connoisseur from Bacon Today.  More yumminess!

Iron River Chamber of Commerce:  http://visitironriver.com/?112030

blueberry image:  http://www.upnorthaction.com/bayfield-county-blueberry-fest-2015.html

Bacon Today review:  https://bacontoday.com/the-rustic-roost-in-iron-river-wi/

Mar 23 – time out to reassess (recess)

Yesterday my disgruntled feelings disturbed me enough to take a step back (2,000 miles from here) & take another look at what I’m doing … or at least how I’m doing it.  In my exercising, I go into a timeless, mindless trance, since there’s no pleasant scenery available.  And in my virtual travel, I plop down in my designated stopover place & take a look around.  I try to get a street-level view of what this particular place is like.  The early photos that I chose were roadside cafes, the road stretching toward the Cascade Mountains, & mountain tunnels. 

My first real shock was when I posted pictures for Monarch, Alberta (Dec 6, 2015).  It was a declining town, and the only pictures I found were of abandoned buildings.  I felt that I was doing a disservice to the town to focus on those & disregard the living residence.  That’s when I started doing some research into each place to be able to provide a little more balanced view of what I saw from my virtual roadside.

I don’t want to be unhappy with a place for not offering what I had hoped for.  I thought that I would do well to “arrive” without expectations.  But I still carried expectations of making serendipitous discoveries.  And I have!  But now I will also add another level of regional research.  I think that if I get a general view of the region I’m entering, then I can look for specific examples in each specific place.  Then my specific discoveries will add up to my own general view of each region.

proposed state

I’m taking a look at the Upper Peninsula of Michigan & the neighboring area of Wisconsin, which some people have said should be a separate state (bombastically named “Superior”).  Residents became known as U.P.-ers, which turned into “Yoopers”.  Many of them feel that they have a stronger connection with the peninsula and its 2 Great Lakes than with the people in the southern mainland parts of their designated states. 

The peninsula is divided between the steep, rugged western half, called the Superior Upland, and the flat, swampy areas in the east.  The rock in the western portion is the result of volcanic eruptions and contains the region's iron and copper ore resources.

In 1837, when Michigan’s two peninsulas officially became a state, the land in the Upper Peninsula was described in a federal report as a "sterile region on the shores of Lake Superior destined by soil and climate to remain forever a wilderness."

ice-strewn shore of Lake Superior

Lake Superior has the greatest effect on the area, especially the northern and western parts.  Winters are long and harsh.  Lake-effect snow causes many areas to get more than 100–250 inches of snow per year, making the western U.P. a part of the Midwestern snow belt.  I guess that spring is in the air, because in the coming week, both snow and rain are predicted.

old Michigan copper mine works

Because of the long harsh winters, the land and climate are not very suitable for agriculture.  Abundant iron and copper deposits were discovered in the 1840s, and the Upper Peninsula's mines produced more mineral wealth than the California Gold Rush.  

small log truck

The land is heavily forested and the economy has been based on mining and logging, but mining has been in decline since the 1920s.  Logging remains a major industry, and outdoor tourism flourishes.  About one third of the peninsula is government-owned recreational forest land, including the Ottawa National Forest and Hiawatha National Forest. 

In some areas, the population has declined more than in others, with the six westernmost counties having lost about half their population since 1920.  Some ghost towns exist in the region.

Large numbers of French Canadian, Finnish, Swedish, Cornish, and Italian immigrants came to the Upper Peninsula to work in the mines and logging camps.  Yoopers speak a dialect influenced by Scandinavian and French-Canadian speech.  The peninsula includes the only counties in the United States where a plurality of residents claim Finnish ancestry. 

Cornish pasty ("pass-tee")

And there's interesting food to try out!  Before I discovered recipes for Saskatchewan & Manitoba, I forgot to look for distinctive regional food.  In Minnesota, I discovered and experimented with hotdish.  On the Upper Peninsula, I’ll be on the lookout for distinctive local cuisine.  Because I’m “intolerant” of dairy foods, I thought that I couldn’t appreciate the cheesiness of mainland Wisconsin & Michigan specialties.  But the U.P. offers an interesting variety of foods.  The immigrant miners from Cornwall brought with them the pasty, a hand-held meat turnover.  I’ll also be looking for “potato sausage”, a Finnish ring-bologna sausage, and cudighi (a spicy Italian meat).  Finnish immigrants contributed a cardamom-flavored sweet bread (nisu), a custardy pancake (pannukakku), and hard slices of toasted cinnamon bread dipped in coffee (korppu).  

thimbleberries

The Seattle area, where I physically live, has a strong Scandinavian ethnic presence, so I may be able to find some of these items in specialty shops here.  I can look for U.P. restaurants with these foods on the menu, but it might be more satisfying to search the internet for recipes, and try to make some myself.  It should come as no surprise to find that maple syrup is produced in this area.  And fresh Great Lakes fish, such as the lake trout, whitefish, and spring smelt are widely eaten.  I had heard of chokecherry, although the name never tempted me to try it.  And what is a thimbleberry?  As obscure and locally specific as our Pacific Northwest salmonberry, I expect.

Wisconsin and the four western Michigan counties bordering it are in the Central Time zone, but most of the Upper Peninsula observes Eastern Time.  That takes me by surprise.  Crossing into Eastern Time will feel like a milestone on my journey. 

info:  Wikipedia.com

images:  Google Images

Maple, Wisconsin

1,826 miles

Mar 22 – I’m the great-granddaughter of maple syrup makers in Vermont, inheritor of handmade maple furniture from the ancestral farm, an admirer of maple foliage in the fall, and a lover of maple in all of its forms.  How could I not visit this town named Maple?

picnic shelter & play courts

Maple, Wisconsin, has a population of about 649, including several unincorporated communities.  I found no town at all, except the truck stop and this picnic shelter & play court.  

It appears that the town name was part of a tree-based naming spree.  Nearby is the town of Poplar, with Elm Rd. & Oak Rd.  Maple has a Balsam Drive.  And then there’s cheerful little Blueberry, where I can imagine a cute little café with freshly-baked muffins.  (No such luck.)

Sundown Cafe & truck stop

I don’t like the attitude that these small communities are inciting in me.  I’m sincerely trying to observe & appreciate each place for what it means to the people living there.  Not as an armchair tourist seeking vicarious thrills.  Not as a scornful big-city sophisticate.  But my empathy is strained, and I’m feeling dissatisfied with myself.

Superior, Wisconsin

Duluth view of Superior

1,812 miles

Mar 21 - Superior is a city of 27,244 people adjacent to both the Village of Superior and the Town of Superior.  I understand that Lake Superior was named for its location upstream from the other great lakes rather than any intrinsic nobility, but this sounds like a whole lot of superiority going on, and a history of boundary disputes among neighbors.

Even though the population of Duluth, Minnesota, across the bay, is triple that of Superior, the two cities share a busy harbor and form a single metropolitan area called the Twin Ports.  They are also surrounded by smaller towns and suburbs.

modern Chippewa memorial
on old burial ground

I was surprised to learn that, about the time of the arrival of Europeans arrival, the aboriginal Dakota people were being pushed out of the area by the Ojibwa/Chippewa (Anishinaabe) peoples.  The Dakota moved west.  We tend to think of native peoples as having lived in stable traditions in their ancestral lands before the invasion of European settlers, but this is a reminder of the domino effect of European settlers on the eastern coast of North America.  Eastern tribes moved west in response, coming into conflict with others in their way.  In the Ojibwa oral history, Spirit Island in the estuary of one of the local rivers was their "Sixth Stopping Place," out of seven in their westward migration.

loading grain onto an ocean-going ship

International shipping and train transportation dominate the Twin Ports.  Grain is a major export, and the silos of the port facilities are visible on the Superior waterfront.  Burlington Northern Railroad has an operations hub in Superior.

Chippewa memorial:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2009_Wisconsin_Point_Burial_Site.JPG

grain elevator photo by Jerry Bielicki:  https://archive.epa.gov/greatlakes/image/web/html/viz_com4.html

Mar 20 – Superior Rowing

my vision of the U.P. road

I’m approaching the long stretch of road through the woods of Wisconsin & Michigan’s Upper Peninsula along Lake Superior, and feeling daunted.  Lots & lots of cycling with very few towns at all.  The Big Woods with one road built through it.  (I may be wrong about the lack of points of interest, and I won’t know until I start exploring, but this is my expectation.)  And then I had an idea …

If only I had a rowing machine at home, I could set up a virtual rowing trip the length of Lake Superior. 

Measuring nautical miles somehow… Seeing waterfront cottages along the shore… 

Of course, this would probably be even more boring & uneventful than cycling through national forests…

Except that it’s storm-tossed Lake Superior, the “Graveyard of the Great Lakes”.  As I’ve been looking for images of rowing along the shores of Lake Superior, I’ve made exciting discoveries!

Bayfield Sea Caves

I found spectacular waterfalls, best viewed from the water, on Minnesota’s northern stretch of shoreline (not on my route).  Crashing waves & frozen waveforms in winter.  And the Bayfield sea caves!  People can row around and through these caves & tunnels formed by those crashing waves.  I found tourist maps of the peninsula for rowing excursions, scenic overlooks, fall foliage-viewing, & recreational experiences.  

There’s enough weather, geology, and boating to keep my interest for quite a while.  I’ll just have to see how many coastal experiences I can weave into my forest cycling journey.

rowing image:  http://www.clcboats.com/shoptips/fitting_out/yawl_piantedosi.html

Rowing to Lake Superior’s Sea Caves, by Patrick Durkin:  http://www.actionhub.com/stories/2013/07/31/rowing-to-lake-superiors-sea-caves/

Proctor, Minnesota

Proctor Roundhouse, 1940s

1,798 miles

March 19 – This region calls itself the Iron Range, and is said to be the greatest iron ore transportation center in the world.  Here is the railroad roundhouse that turned trains around in Proctor.  

Proctor (pop. 2,468) is a village whose history is tied to its neighbor & long-time rival Duluth. 

J. Proctor Knott

It was established as Proctorknott in 1894, for the Honorable J. Proctor Knott, a former Governor of Kentucky and Congressman.  In 1871 he had delivered a satirical speech to Congress entitled “The Untold Delights of Duluth” which, of course, ridiculed Duluth.  The name of the town was shortened to Proctor in 1904.

info & images: http://www.lakesnwoods.com/Proctor.htm#sthash.ahYKQjDA.dpuf

J. Proctor Knott speech:  http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=170101