Goodwill Summer Resort

Photograph dated (approx.) 1915, from the Enice Burgess, Tower Weekly News publisher, collection.

“Lake Vermilion, with its many charming little islets — 365 in all, it has been asserted,  most of them well timbered, makes an ideal summer ‘retreat’ for the city man who loves nature. It has been only within the last few years that the people of Tower have awakened to the possibilities for the city in developing the lake. A local review reads: ‘the beauty of Lake Vermilion was not fully appreciated until 1910, when I. Goodwill erected a hotel on the main land, about eighteen miles up the lake. In 1912 the Vermilion Boat and Outing Company was organized and constructed boathouses on East Two Rivers and cottages on the Isle of Pines.The Grey-Werton Company, Hunter’s Lodge, Fabin’s Place, Joyce’s Hotel, and others, with the officials of the D. and I. R. Railroad, are making Lake Vermilion the Mecca of the summer tourists.’”

Excerpted from: — Duluth and St. Louis County, Minnesota; their story and people; an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, educational, civic and social development

Walter Van Brunt, author

Chicago, New York, American historical Society, 1921.