The red sails of the Hjordis can be seen traversing the Grand Marais harbor all summer long, but the Hjordis isn’t the first sailboat to transport sightseers across the harbor. This is a photo of the “Scott boat” carrying passengers across the harbor many years ago before Grand Marais was as developed as it is today.
At a storytelling event celebrating the history of Cook County on March 9, 2013 at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts, Cook County Historical Society Museum Director Carrie McHugh shared some interesting historical tidbits about Grand Marais.
McHugh stated that the first post office in Grand Marais opened in 1854 and was called Hiawatha.
In 1880, the population of Grand Marais was 65. Five years later, because of dredging and development in the harbor, it had grown to 322. The break wall and lighthouse were built in 1885, and the road from Duluth to Grand Marais was completed in the late 1920s.
An old map of a plan for Grand Marais shows land development that has not taken place even up to this point. Instead of numbered streets and avenues, all the streets and avenues had names. The map shows a railroad from the west leading to the harbor, with no Highway 61 and no development along the water west of Broadway except for the railroad line.
North-south avenues west of Broadway are named Madison (First Avenue West), Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Polk, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Delaware, Superior, Astor, Juneau, Prospect, Florida, Jefferson, and Washington (which would be Sixteenth Avenue West). Avenues east of Broadway are named Monroe, Hennepin, Nicolett, Georgia, Lafayette, and Lincoln (which would be Sixth Avenue East).
East-west streets north of Wisconsin would be Milwaukee, Duluth, St. Paul, Minnesota, Ashland, Minneapolis, and Grand Marais.
“Grand Marais” means “grand marsh” in French, but the Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) term for the “grand twin bays” was Chibitobigom.
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