This dock down by the Coast Guard Station in Grand Marais was once busy with commercial fishing activity. At a storytelling event highlighting Cook County history on March 9, 2013 at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts, former Cook County commissioner Chet Lindskog said that at one point, 109 commercial fishermen worked the North Shore.
Billy Blackwell, who organized the event, mentioned Hjelmer Aakvick, a Lake Superior commercial fisherman who searched the wintry seas for three days for the body of Carl Hammer, who perished on the lake.
Blackwell said that Aakvick commissioned Grand Marais resident Mark Hansen to build him a Viking coffin and requested that his body be sent out onto the lake and set afire when he died. The local funeral home called the attorney general, who told Hansen he would go to jail if they did that. Blackwell said Aakvick’s wife had him buried in the Hovland Cemetery.
Former Cook County Commissioner Gene Erickson said the opening of the docks at Taconite Harbor increased the population and brought many school children into the county’s schools.
Some of the state’s gaming records were made in Cook County, including a 43 lb. 8 oz lake trout from Lake Superior and a 33 lb 4 oz. salmon from the Poplar River.
This is part of a series about the tales of Cook County history that were shared at the Arrowhead Center for the Arts on March 9, 2013. The event was called “Stories you’ve never heard – and good ones to hear again!”
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