Camping on Pine Island in 1919

The first of many wonderful summers on Lake Vermilion

by Elizabeth A. (Ferguson) Bitney

September 1987

I had just had my eleventh birthday, and my brother, Richard, was eight. Our folks, Olin J. Ferguson and his wife Hannah, had decided that it was time to explore the lots on Pine Island that Dad had bought some time before, from O. H. Clark, a representative for Gray-Werton Co. Vermilion Dells had been platted in 1914, according to the map we had.

Our journey from Nebraska had been a long adventure of four train rides before we arrived on the second morning at Tower, Minn. We had lunch in town, and bought loads of groceries which followed all our baggage to the boat dock. We still had time to see the stores and study everything in Doc Lackey’s Trading Post before boat time.

The “Tub” we were told, was a boat brought from Lake Superior and was very seaworthy, though it rolled some in the big waves on Big Bay. (Later years this boat was called the “Bobby B”.) It brought us to “Kelly’s Dock” where all of our belongings and we were deposited, on Pine Island. They’d see us again next week at this dock with our next grocery order.

Our tents and the frame for the big one, the steamer trunk, suit cases and groceries were all carried through the woods to our lot, where a clearing had been prepared for the floor and frame. The sun was vanishing behind clouds and everyone hurried to get ready for the storm. Of course it rained before the big canvas was all in place over its frame and where it got wet on the underside the rain dripped through. With strategically placed rain coats, umbrellas and pails, our living quarters took on a funny sight. But the fragrance of the wet evergreens was great! And never forgotten. (In later years, when the roads were more than a two-rut squiggly path, and we drove, Dad said that our accelerator foot got heavy when we began to smell evergreens.) But even in the rain that night, supper needed attention, before it got too dark. Mom made beds with Dick’s help, and Dad and I fried bacon and eggs. My contribution was holding the umbrella over the frying pan with the smoke gathering around my head, and trying to see what I was doing through stinging tears. But oh how good it tasted, sitting in our lantern lit tent!

Eventually the two tents were positioned with a fly canvas connecting them. This two tent summer home was called “Tepee Nopah.”

The Tub brought our groceries and other necessities on our order to Olson’s sent on the previous trip. It came two or three times a week. When Big Bay Was very rough, the boat was late and the milk was sour on arrival. So we had plenty of pancakes and biscuits. Baking was done on a board laid on a bed of coals in the one hole trash burner and rescued when the board caught on fire.

When Mother let out a squeak we knew that she’d found a little yellow snake when she lifted the cover over our hole-in-the-ground ice box, and we ran to her rescue, or was it to see how big it was this time? A couple of nights something snorted outside our tents, but it didn’t bother our provisions. In the morning we found deer footprints on the sand beach.

When exploring, we found a rough corduroy “road” or path from our lot back through the woods to a high point of the island where the loggers a few years before had a camp and where they’d built a little birch lookout tower. From the top rung, we could see the water on each side of the island. On these hikes we learned to use a compass. We gathered leaves to identify, all of which made us well acquainted with the woods.

From our shore, we watched great booms of logs being towed up the channel by a steam boat toward the Tower mill, whose smoke pinpointed the town on the horizon.

Some afternoons, Dad hung a hammock in the trees nearby and with a couple of folding chairs, we held a class. Sometimes we learned some French, sometimes math. Sometimes Dad read to us. Curious jays and warblers flitted around, and grouse scooted across our path. The pileated woodpecker drilled nearby.

The one night, the north sky lighted up with the aurora borealis. We bundled up in coats, and Dad rowed us out to near Emerald Island to watch. Colored curtains of light moved as if in a breeze. Light shafts reached the zenith, then over and down to other side. A great display.

Dick and I learned to row and we sang “Row, row, row your boat to our hearts content. A musical family without a piano was a new experience. We learned to sing parts, and learned to play the harmonica. Often after watching a lovely sunset we all sang “Now the day is over” on the way back to the tents.

Such a wonderful summer! And it was the first of many, including those with younger brother Bob, sister Ruth, — through the fourth generation — so far.

—originally published in the September 17, 1987 Centennial Issue of the Vermilion Iron Journal