Robert “Bob” Dunn died on March 15, 2017, in his home in Princeton, Minn.
Bob was a lifelong outdoorsman and environmentalist whose love of the boreal forest and the people of northeastern Minnesota gave him some of his life’s greatest adventures.
When he was 7 years old, his parents began bringing him to the North Shore to provide him with outdoor opportunities and for relief from his hay fever. They first stayed at Stickney Store and Resort (now Lamb’s Resort) but soon after began going to Nelson’s Resort (later Ross’ Resort) on Caribou Lake. This early connection with Cook County had a profound lifelong influence on the rest of his days.
Every year – except when he was serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War – Bob spent all the time he could at Caribou Lake, where his parents purchased land and built a cabin in 1933. He had many amazing experiences in Cook County, including working a trapline with old settlers, fire fighting, catching “jack fish” with red daredevils, hunting partridge, camping, canoeing, hiking, and cruising Caribou in a restored 1930s Dodge watercar named Snoop. He seemed to know every lake in Cook County and the story of every shipwreck on the Big Lake. He watched Grand Marais change over the years, remembering when it had a movie theater and the harbor was filled with rafts of logs.
Bob had many great adventures in the North Country, including hiking in to fish Pine Lake (now Crescent Lake) many times before the road was put in, circumnavigating Lake Nipigon twice in an 18-foot open boat with a 1930s 10-horsepower motor, using a modified Model A truck on the railroad rails to get into remote lakes to fish, and going on numerous trips to the BWCA and Quetico from the 1930s to the 2000s, even portaging a canoe when he was in his 80s.
Bob was among a group that started the Caribou Lake Property Owners Association and was a member to his last day. In 1996, Bob and his sisters, Dorothy Hall and Jean (Holmgren) Robb, placed a conservation easement on the family’s 40 acres on Caribou Lake to limit into perpetuity potential development of the lakeshore property. Bob and his family have planted more than 20,000 trees on their property, including many white pines – his favorite tree.
His love for the outdoors and for the Arrowhead area, in particular, was foundational to him becoming such a passionate environmentalist. Protecting Minnesota’s natural resources was a top priority for Bob, who served in the Minnesota House of Representatives and then State Senate from 1965 to 1980. Members of both political parties respected Bob as one of the statesmen behind environmental laws of the 1970s that put Minnesota at the nation’s forefront of protecting natural resources. After leaving the Senate, he was appointed to chair state agencies and served on multiple citizen boards – all related to the environment and natural resources.
Bob was preceded in death by his first wife, Mary Louise Caley; his parents, Dr. George and Marguerite Dunn; and sisters.
He is survived by his wife, Bette; children Ruth Dunn, Susan Dunn, George Dunn, Libby DunnQuery, and Bill Dunn; step-children Bob Hedenstrom and Mary Leirmo; 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Services took place March 18, 2017.
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