How many times have we driven past Gates 1-12 of the Encampment Forest Association? Myrna suggests that there is a column there. Here goes.
We know we are there as we go northeast on 61 as the first of the passing lanes end. Around the corner is Gate 6 with a big sign “E.F. A.” Each of the gates has its own modest “No Trespassing” sign. How I have been tempted to drive past one of those signs to see what I might see and see what reaction there would be! Says one Lake County real-estate agent who asked not to be named: “What I find amazing is how many people on the North Shore, even right in Two Harbors, have no idea that this place exists.”
I found more on the www than I expected for a place so committed to privacy. Once upon a time, this was a closed community of well-to-do Minneapolis citizens, now there are Internet signs that EFA is becoming more open to the world. Here is a little history generously borrowed from a May 2013, Artful Living article.
In November 1921, a fearless Englishman named Thomas G. Winter camped on a piece of land in Lake County that took his breath away. Around him was a thick stand of old-growth forest, heavy with white pine, cedar, birch, balsam and spruce. On either side stood grand, sweeping cliffs. In the valley between ran a cold trout stream that tumbled into a 40-foot waterfall. Half a mile farther down the river was another 20-foot plunge. Winter followed the water as it danced over a series of rock ledges before emptying into a bulrush swamp and then finally out to Lake Superior.
Winter was so overtaken by the beauty of the place he immediately posted a letter to some friends. “Through this magnificent woods flows Encampment River, a beautiful trout stream cascading through a rocky gorge, leaping in several falls down the hillside, with here and there deep pools where the trout lie,” he wrote enthusiastically. “There are many partridges, and wildlife abounds, including deer and moose.”
The land was owned by the county attorney, John Olson, but Winter was determined to raise the money to purchase it. He started a furious letter-writing campaign to his most monied friends: civil engineer Francis Shenehon, bank president Edward Decker, Edina developer Sam Thorpe, manufacturing magnate Edwin Elwell*, insurance executive Walter Leach, lawyer Joseph Kingman, architect Edwin Hewitt, Minnesota State Bar President H. V. Mercer, surgeon Arthur Strachauer, St. Paul Academy Founder Charles W. Ames and 14 others. Knowing full well the land was out of his price range, Winter, a midlevel grain dealer, proposed a kind of cooperative, where each man (and one woman) would put in roughly $1,000, and the rest would be borrowed from the bank. In just a few short months, the deal was done. In 1929, the group paid $27,500 for 1,575 acres around the Encampment River.
The new owners set up the Encampment Forest Association to dictate strict rules about cabin sizes and how many guests could visit each summer. Almost immediately, an air of hushed secrecy surrounded the place. The Artful Living author noted a mile’s worth of “No Trespassing” signs on the Superior Hiking Trail as it goes by. As of 2013, properties for sale within the EFA were not listed publicly.
In 93 years, just a handful of owners have been admitted who are not related by blood or marriage to the original 25 investors. (Over the years, the main families have intermarried and now are virtually all connected by blood, marriage or business.) At least 16 current owners go back three generations, and a handful are now fourth- and fifth-generation owners. The exceptions are exceptional. Win Wallin, the late Medtronic executive, managed to get a cabin without the right family tree. So did George McClintock, the late managing partner at Faegre & Benson.
But for all their protectiveness, the owners at Encampment can’t seem to help themselves when it comes to writing about their wooded getaway. northshore-thereandback.blogspot.com/2008/07/okay-i-get-message.html. Charles Pillsbury published a 55-stanza poem about the place. No fewer than five books have been penned about the community, all of which are housed in the permanent collection at the Minnesota Historical Society. In 1971, Myrtle Penner published The Hub of the Forest, detailing the naturalistic wealth of the place. Yet another book on Encampment has page after page of family snapshots, none of them captioned. There are families lounging on the pristine basalt-rock beach, fishing in Encampment River, communing together at Cathedral Grove, the community’s natural “cathedral” with its intimate semicircle formed by massive, old-growth pines and its rock “pulpit.”
Like its cousin at Beaver Bay, the EFA is symbolic of the white privilege most of us enjoy in the Arrowhead. It is a classic Minnesota-style gated community, without barrier gates but many signs. There are indications of change at EFA More next time.
*Edwin Elwell may be a shirttail, near relative of mine. Not close enough to have invited me to visit EFA.
Steve Aldrich is a retired Hennepin County lawyer, mediator, and Judge, serving from 1997-2010. He and his wife moved here in 2016. He likes to remember that he was a Minnesota Super Lawyer before being elected to the bench. Now he is among the most vulnerable to viruses. Steve really enjoys doing weddings, the one thing a retired judge can do without appointment by the Chief Justice. He has never officiated at a Skype, Zoom or Google Team wedding.
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