Harbor of Echos

 

The quiet was penetrated by the sound of a duck’s wings passing overhead. Then song birds announcing the beginning of dawn, and the far-off moan of a loon. Then quiet again, as I slid from my row boat seat onto the floorboards. I lay there, as still as the calm water that surrounded my boat, waiting for the first evidence of the sun’s presence. 

I tried to picture this same dawn over a century ago, when this entire area was filled with commercial fishermen trying to scratch out a living. In the direction of Booth Island,  I tried to imagine the long wharf that fronted fish houses and storage buildings, and the bustle that likely started that early in the morning. Booth served over 100 fishermen and 40 boats by transporting their catches to markets in Duluth and Chicago with their steamers, using the island as a transfer point. The America was one of those steamers.

Booth Island

To my left, at the end of Barnum Island, I pictured the cluster of fishing shacks that Captain John Johns allowed beside his own fishery, established in 1885. By 1892, he shifted from fishing to tourism, starting the first resort on Isle Royale by building a hotel and cabins, evicting those fishermen in the process. A legendary story has it that the Sivertson brothers, having operated out of one of those fishing shacks, came that year to find their shack had been disassembled and stacked on the opposite shore on Washington Island. Before starting the fishing season, the Sivertsons had to reconstruct their home and fish house, beginning what would become a contentious relationship between Johns and the Sivertsons over the years. But it would also be the start of Sivertson Fisheries, which would grow to become one of the largest fisheries on the island and in Duluth, Minnesota in the mid-20th century. 

The buildings that remain from that era surround me in my rowboat in the middle of the harbor. They help fuel my imagination. That’s what they should do for all those buildings in the future. To include the homes on Barnum Island, built during that same era, but entertaining a different crowd - wealthy grain traders from Duluth and Minneapolis. Beginning with George Barnum, after whom the island is named, since the time he bought it from John Johns.

Johns' great-grandson gives tours to anyone who drops by the restored Johns Hotel while he's there. I can see its red roof catching the dawn's light. What looks like a small log home has four bedrooms, a kitchen (with an authentic wood cooking stove), and a small living area, complete with a pedal piano player. Tom Johns spends three weeks of every summer refurbishing the hotel and surrounding area, hoping to reach museum quality at some point, but you can already feel the history today. 

Johns Hotel Then

Johns Hotel Now

Staring at the brightening sky, I wonder what could be done to speed restoration and secure preservation for the long term. The Park Service constraints aren't likely to ease, and the local families are not likely to continue to carry a burden from their own pockets. What's needed is critical mass - a broader base, more hands, and more resources. In the stillness of my row boat, cradled by the calm harbor, a few ideas take root.