Above: Justine Kerfoot pauses for a moment from busy resort operation for a photo with her children. (L-R) Bruce, Pat, Justine and Sharon. Left: Living in the rugged, untamed wilderness, Bruce Kerfoot learned at an early age how to run a trap line.
Gunflint Lodge has been sold to John and Mindy Fredrickson, and the Kerfoot family will not be involved with the business any longer. Below is a brief history of the family that has long been associated with the Gunflint Trail, and an interview with Bruce Kerfoot.
Doris Blankenburg and her son, Russell, started Gunflint Lodge in 1925. In 1929 the Blankenburgs sold the small resort to Mae Spunner and her daughter, Justine.
That first year mother and daughter enlarged the lodge building, putting in a fireplace, a dining room, and added three cabins.
Justine learned to repair outboard motors by trial and error. She was a Northwestern University college graduate with a major in zoology with minors in chemistry and philosophy. She hoped to attend medical school, but after the Great Depression hit, the family’s finances were wiped out and they moved from Illinois to Gunflint Lodge permanently.
In 1934 Justine married William “Bill” Kerfoot, who was the son of the president of Hamline College. As the years went by Justine grew to be larger than life; a legend in every sense of the word and Gunflint Lodge would grow to be the largest resort on the Gunflint Trail.
Justine and Bill’s story is well known, but their son Bruce, who has guided and grown the resort throughout his life, also has his story, and here is a small piece of it, shared with the News-Herald on one of his last days as the owner of Gunflint Lodge. At what age did you know you wanted to take over the resort?
In 1955 I decided to major in hotel administration at whatever school I could get into, which at that time was limited to Michigan State and Cornell University. I graduated from Cook County High School in 1956 and was accepted at Cornell.
By my sophomore year (1957) I knew I wanted to come back to Gunflint. Did you ever work outside of the resort?
At Cornell we were required to do three years of summer intern work. I qualified for one year by virtue of my summer jobs at Gunflint, and then I spent one summer on Cape Cod working the front desk at a new hotel that did not have all it advertised.
What a summer that was. I learned how not to run a hotel that year.
I squeezed in my last internship back at Gunflint.
I graduated in 1960. I was commissioned upon graduation, since the draft board was still active. I did my two years as a lieutenant in the Army missile artillery. How has the business changed throughout the years?
When I returned to Gunflint in 1963, it was to a dated fishing resort with six employees, a seasonal operation, very little operating capital, with old cabins and a rebuilt lodge [the original lodge burned in 1953].
I had more time than money, so I did all the building myself. Each winter I upgraded some of the cabins, adding living rooms, wood-burning Franklin fireplaces and a few porches. Then I had a hiccup in my life, as my first wife and two kids left me.
After being a bachelor for a couple of years, I married Sue [47 years ago] and we have two sons.
Eventually we started adding new cabins and then built a campground. We built Gunflint Pines, which was part of our resort back then. We started to expand our marketing and got into new endeavors—we started to offer fly-in fishing in Canada and eventually operated 10 fly-in camps up to 100 miles north of us.
We expanded in Grand Marais opening Kerfoot’s Kove, a supper club on the site of the current Best Western, and later the Common Ground.
Eventually we got out of both the Canadian and the Grand Marais restaurant business, and focused on Gunflint.
In the coming years we bought Mom out of both Gunflint Northwoods Outfitters and Grand Marais Outfitters. Along the way we built enough year-round cabins so that we could winterize the lodge and move into a year-round business. We have continued to expand and add cabins and recreational facilities on a regular basis, the last of which is the Towering Pines Canopy Tour and nine additional cabins at the outfitters.
At this point we have 75 employees in the summer and 30 in the winter, all but one cabin at the lodge has been replaced with deluxe cabins (rock fireplaces, private saunas, hot tubs, all queen and king beds, full kitchens, washer/dryers, and a private bathroom for each bedroom). We have a fulltime management team and an in-house CFO. So the lodge is busier than ever?
When I came back from the Army, our clientele was a basic summer fishing crowd. There were no winter guests at any of the properties along the Gunflint Trail. When I started to upgrade the cabins we started to attract a family trade and that started to grow the business.
When we winterized we focused on the silent sports and got a cross country crowd for the winter. We thought our trails were “first class”—we had a bed spring drag behind a snowmobile and we used the deer trails in our back basin.
Then as our cabins got fancier we started to attract more couples, honeymooners, anniversaries, and weddings. We now market to niche opportunities where we can—dog lover weekends, wolf howling, moose searches, etc.
More of Brian Larsen’s interview with former Gunflint Lodge owner Bruce Kerfoot will follow in an upcoming issue.
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