Fourteen miles up the Caribou Trail is Tait Lake. The roads around the lake, Cap’s Trail and Billie’s Trail, were named for my aunt and uncle Mathilde “Billie” Petersen and Martin “Cap” Petersen. They once owned the land upon which today’s Tait Lake residents have built their homes. The original Tait Lake Lodge, which Cap and Billie built, was their passion — this is their story.
Photo courtesy of the family Billie Petersen with a Tait Lake Lodge hunting customer.
The first three cabins were built before a road existed. The “Sportsmen’s,” a small one-room log cabin, was built in 1937. The next year saw construction of the “Log Cabin” which was located close by in a small clearing.
With accommodations in place, the first guests, primarily hunters and fishermen, began to arrive on foot, via the four mile trail. In 1939, the Sportsmen’s became a guest cabin and Cap and Billie moved into a relatively large cabin that they built on the shoreline in front of where the lodge now sits. In the 1940s, the county finally pushed the Caribou Trail past Tait Lake, and Cap and Billie built their road into the resort.
Money was short but their needs were few. Logs for the cabins were cut on site; furniture was crafted from the wood on hand. Cap’s boat building expertise provided the resort’s first skiffs, which evolved into square sterns with the advent of outboard motors. In the summer, fresh vegetables grew in a garden by the Sportsmen’s. A chicken coop alongside provided nutrients for the soil plus eggs and poultry. One summer they had a pig. A root cellar kept potatoes, carrots and onions through the winter and an ice house cooled perishables through the summer.
Trapping was always part of their lives. In the early years it provided most of their cash income. It also provided a few stories.
Cap was retrieving some game from one of the traps and resetting it while Billie, carrying on ahead to check the next trap, came upon a bull moose. That moose was in rut and none too happy — he charged.
Billie only had her .22, and knew she could not down it with that caliber but had a flash of memory from someone telling her that you could stun a moose by shooting it at the base of its antlers. She fired off a shot.
The moose, cutting off its charge, abruptly turned and disappeared over a small rise. Billie went back for Cap.
“I think I shot a moose,” she told him. “With a .22? Not likely,” he said. “No,” she said, “I think I did.”
Cap shouldered his pack and they headed to the spot where Billie had seen the moose disappear. It was dead in its tracks. She’d shot it right through the eye!
Jocelyn Thornton recalls “the life and legacy” of her aunt
and uncle, Billie and Cap Peterson, original proprietors of
the Tait Lake Lodge in Lutsen. The News-Herald will publish
one in this series of eight reminiscences each month.
Do you have an old picture or a story from years gone by that you would like to share with Cook County News-Herald readers? Give us a call,
or stop by our Grand Marais office. We’d love to hear your Historical Reflections. Call (218) 387-9100; e-mail starnews@boreal.org; or stop by
our officeat 15 First Avenue West.
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