Someone's Been Here Before
Wherever you pitch your tent or beach your kayak in the Apostle Islands, someone's been there before. If you think it's a good place to land, you're not the first; a geologist named Bela Hubbard already knew that in 1840.
"As it is an object to select a good halting place, and particularly a convenient camping ground, we very frequently select spots which have been the camping grounds of the voyageurs and of the Indian almost from time immemorial."
A lot of those people before you didn't just pitch tents, either; they set up housekeeping. Every one of the Apostles has been someone's home, including tiny Gull Island. Today when you roll out your sleeping bag on Oak Island, you may be close to the 1850s homestead of Ben Armstrong, Chief Buffalo's personal interpreter. Or maybe you'll end by the traces of Big Ole Hansen's place on Stockton Island- they say Big Ole was the best oarsman on Lake Superior. If you stretch out on the beach on Sand Island, you might catch your rays the same place Dr. Disen did. Dr. Disen was an anatomy professor from the Cities with a summer cabin on Sand Island. He was a nudist, too, and one time he shocked a fisherman's wife who was bringing him a pie.
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore will take registrations for the 2012 Group Camping Permit Lottery from Thursday, December 1, 2011 through Tuesday, January 10, 2012 during regular business hours (8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.) To register, call 715-779-3397, extension 1. http://www.nps.gov/apis/planyourvisit/camping.htm
Right across the West Channel from the new Red Cliff casino, the Basswood Island campsites sit in the clearing where the Harrison family used to live. The Harrison kids were the last to live year-round on one of the National Lakeshore Apostles.
Bob Harrison was a pilot during the war. They called him "tough as a hardwood knot," but he was really a dreamer. Back in his bunk at nights, he couldn't get his mind off an idea: buying an island in Lake Superior, and logging the old way. He'd build a cabin for his family, haul the logs by horse, and save up money for a Cat sooner or later. The only big thing he'd need from the start was his own plane. He could use it to fly tourists and hunters on and off the island, and make extra money that way.
Things didn't work out as Bob hoped. He and his brother Bill gave it their best for a few years, but it didn't help the finances when the plane fell through the ice off Red Cliff one winter. Then their log boom broke in 1954, and besides, the kids had to start school some day.
The Harrison brothers weren't the only war vets with dreams of the islands. There were Carl Moe and George England, a sailor and a Marine. On Christmas Day 1946, they hired Henry Johnson to take them out to South Twin. Marooned until spring, as Carl put it, they'd get plenty of work done turning their new land into a first-class summer resort.
All went okay for Carl and George at first. They cut logs by hand, then hauled them down by the dock to build their first-class restaurant. The guys did a good job; the Park Service used the building as a "contact station" for years, right among the campsites. When they tore it down in 2004, it took the crew twice as long as they thought it would.
Things went sour for a bit when George cut his foot with an axe. That stopped the work-- it was no one-man job-- and then they had to wait fifty-one days for the ice to firm up so they could walk back and get George some real help.
That first summer, though, a young lady named Mary McGuire came out with her folks. She and Carl hit it off, and the second summer she came back as Mary Moe, and the third summer they brought out a little boy named Steve Moe.
Mary didn't mind cooking meals for the tourists and fishermen, baking bread every day, or hauling water from the lake in buckets, but she did a draw a line once. She and Carl used to take boat rides to visit the Coasties at Devils Island when she was expecting, and once, one of the wives there gave her own baby a bottle of cold milk. When Mary asked why, the mom explained that with only a wood stove, she couldn't warm a bottle at night, so she gave him cold milk all the time to get him used to it.
When they got back to South Twin, Mary told Carl, "Not for my baby!" so Carl put in a kerosene heater.
Finally, let's you and me pull our kayaks onto the sandspit at Outer Island. I want to show you the spot that Harlan Kelsey looked at back in 1930. Mr. Kelsey was an official from the National Park Service, here to take a look at the Apostle Islands and see if they were worth calling a national park.
He put things bluntly in his report to Washington. There was no way the Apostle Islands would ever look the way they used to; way too many fires, way too much logging, way too much footprint-of-man. He let the locals down easy, but he made it clear: the Apostle Islands would never be any kind of kind of wilderness again.
Mr. Harlan Kelsey was wrong. The Outer Island sandspit, and most of the National Lakeshore, is a wilderness today. The Gaylord Nelson Wilderness, and that's a good thing, so long as you and I don't ever forget there's been other people there before us.
Copyright 2012 Bob Mackreth, permission granted for one-time online publication in the Ashland Current. Bob Mackreth is a writer and historian living in the Lake Superior country. With more than 30 years of experience as a park ranger, he takes a special interest in National Park Service issues.