In August and September 1937, Russell Lee photographed lumber camps in Itasca and Koochiching counties. Ten Library of Congress frames show the table, the horses and the buildings.
Warren Upham's 1920 gazetteer gives one waterfall on the Big fork two place names, Grand Falls and Big Falls. This instalment reads his entries and the streams he lists nearby.
Read from the 1986 National Park Service water-level study: how the Kettle Falls dam became Docket #1 of the International Joint Commission, and why the commission's April 18, 1913 decision declined it.
Russell Lee's 1937 photographs of Craigville, Itasca County, from the Library of Congress: a main street, beer parlors, a barber shop in a saloon and a lumber camp.
Warren Upham's 1920 gazetteer records why Jameson township, the village of Little Fork, and nearby Pelland and Lindford carry the names they do.
Read from the 1986 National Park Service study and Warren Upham’s 1920 gazetteer: what the Ontario contracts required of the Falls dam, what was built, and how the river changed by 1911.
Russell Lee's 1937 photographs of Ericsburg, from the Library of Congress: an excelsior mill, a general store, artesian wells, a log barn and a sawmill.
Warren Upham's 1920 gazetteer devotes just one sentence to Ranier, naming it a railway village at the mouth of Rainy lake, and the page around it says more.
The Historic Resource Study records Roosevelt's April 13, 1908 veto of a time-extension bill for the Rainy River dam, and the Canadian enactments and irregularities beside it.
A 1986 National Park Service study traces the four acts of Congress, two Ontario contracts, and two Canadian statutes Edward Backus needed for his Rainy River dam, 1898-1906.
Upham's 1920 gazetteer traces the Cree name shared by Koochiching County, the lake, the river and the falls through two centuries of written record.
The Library of Congress holds 10 photographs Russell Lee made in Gemmell in August 1937: a boarded school, an old hotel, a post office and a lumber camp left behind.
Warren Upham's 1920 gazetteer entry for International Falls: the falls it's named for, the 1908 dam, and the two county officers who told him.
The first instalment of How the Falls Got Its Dam draws on a National Park Service study and a 1917 IJC transcript to introduce Backus and Oberholtzer.
Ten 1937 photographs by Russell Lee show Littlefork, Minnesota, from a telephone switchboard to a threshing crew, now held by the Library of Congress.
Prohibition, the nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933, had profound effects across the United States, including in International Falls, Minnesota. This period was marked by significant challenges, including the…
Adventure and the Fur Trade
A painful memory lingers after 35 years.
The Heart of the Community
Kettle Falls is a rich historical site that reflects the region’s cultural and economic evolution. The area has long served as a vital hub for local communities, explorers, and entrepreneurs. For centuries, Kettle Falls was a central point along the…
