In early November 1906, Charles J. Anderson and Osborne Ellquist set out for some trapping and were caught in a big snow storm with heavy winds. They left Maple Hill for a trapping cabin on Northern Light Lake and then moved on to Tom Lake. During the next winter day, they traveled from Tom Lake to Hovland, then from Hovland to Grand Marais along the Lake Superior shore, and finally headed north, home to Maple Hill.
Cook County Historical Center archives
Wayne Anderson shared his dad’s 1906 story during a 2008 interview. “When my dad was, I think 17, he and Osborne Ellquist, they trapped together. They had a trapping cabin at Northern Light Lake. They would walk—there was no road to Northern Light Lake. [From there] they’d go on the trap line along the way, eventually to Tom Lake.
“They left Maple Hill to Tom Lake in early November in beautiful weather, no snow. They didn’t bring snowshoes with them. One evening when they were there, his partner, Ellquist, looked out the door and said, ‘It snowed a foot of snow already!’
It was snowing like crazy. They got up [the next] morning, and there was almost three feet of snow. I guess they tried to see if they could get back to Northern Light. [They] went just a little way and found it was so deep and so many trees had gone down that they couldn’t.
“They thought, ‘Well, we’ll have to try the tote road that goes to Hovland.’ So, that day they chopped out some cedar and made some skis. [They used] some boot tops to hold the skis on. The following day they got up early in the morning, they fried pancakes and ate all they could. They stuffed the rest in their pockets and headed for Hovland down this tote road. And, because of all the windfalls, it was extremely slow going. They had to go around windfalls more than they went forward on the road.
“As they got closer to Hovland, they met a crew of lumberjacks coming to open the road. So they followed their tracks and had a little bit better going. But they didn’t get to Hovland until evening. When they got to the shore, there hadn’t been so much snow so they could walk without snowshoes or skis. So they threw their skis in the Flutereed River and they walked the 18 miles to Grand Marais.
“They got to Grand Marais sometime after midnight. And then, since there was no particular place to stay at Grand Marais, they walked to Maple Hill. So they walked from Tom Lake on skis to Hovland, to Grand Marais, to Maple Hill in one day. And they ate their pancakes on the way! And they got home here to Maple Hill, I guess, about 3 o’clock in the morning, having been walking all day. People were really tough in those days—for 17-year-olds!”
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