Fosston, Minnesota, tall tales

1,630 miles

March 1 – Fosston was named for Louis Foss, an immigrant from Norway who started one of the first businesses in the community.  Louis Foss & Company was probably a general store, which every town needed from the start.  Saskatchewan also has a little hamlet of Fosston, but no information could be found about its namesake.

Cordwood Pete & Tamarack

The town of Fosston was said to be the adopted hometown of Cordwood Pete, the lesser-known younger brother of the legendary giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan.  The younger brother Peter Bunyan was a mere 4 feet 9 inches in height. Pete's growth was apparently stunted because Paul ate everything in sight.

According to the tall tales, Paul Bunyan left his home in Bangor, Maine, to make his way in the world, and ended up in the north woods of Minnesota where he excelled as a lumberjack. Pete followed Paul to Minnesota and found work as a lumberjack near Fosston.  Local lumberjacks nicknamed him "Le Dang Cordwood Pete" because his size suggested he was more suited to cutting cordwood than felling huge trees. Pete spent much time in the local saloons, and his fellow lumberjacks soon learned he was hot tempered and full of spunk. They came to admire his feisty spirit, and no one dared fight him.

Legend has it that he "borrowed" his brother's double-bladed ax one day. He swung the ax, and its weight kept the ax spinning around and around as if in perpetual motion. When the ax finally stopped spinning, 100 acres of timber had been felled. The railroad hired Pete the next day to clear a path for their tracks, and before the day was over, he had clear-cut fifty square miles of timber. Pete had to give his brother's ax back to him the next day, and he never again achieved such a lumberjacking feat.  After that, Pete stuck to cutting cordwood which he hauled to market with the help of his little donkey named Tamarack.

Fosston tourist attraction statues

The story of Cordwood Pete had been all but forgotten until the spring of 2001 when a time capsule was discovered by a work crew demolishing one of Fosston's oldest buildings. Inside was the complete story of Cordwood Pete.

Some historians of folklore have called the tall tales about Paul Bunyan "fakelore", referring to modern stories passed off as older folktales.  It seems that stories about Paul Bunyan have been used in many former lumbering regions to boost tourism.  And it is quite possible that the legend of Cordwood Pete may also qualify as "fakelore."  The author of the Cordwood Pete legend may have been Arvid "Clem" Clementson, a former mayor of Fosston.  It seems to me that the difference between tall tales and “fakelore” is a fine distinction for academics.  It’s all preposterous fiction, made up by one storyteller or a series of revisionists.

info: Wikipedia.com