Paul Bunyan's Anchor, or The World's Largest Coat Hanger

September 22, 2009 - Ortonville, MN



We were a little disappointed with this one. We were hoping for something a bit more anchory. While I'm sure it's effective, it looks more like a hanger made from a huge slab of granite and some giant chain links.

The legend goes that Paul Bunyan was quite the fisherman and that Big Stone Lake was one of his favorite lakes to fish in. According to the plaque, "Big Stone Lake, visible here to the north-west, and the state's 10th largest, was one of Paul's favorites, not only for the variety and size of its fish, but because here he found a stone heavy enough to anchor his mammoth boat. Squared roughly from the region's famous granite, it weighed 110 tons." It goes on to say that this anchor was (conveniently) rediscovered on the eve of Minnesota's statehood centennial in 1958 and then was hoisted to the hilltop it now resides on as a memento of the state's 100th birthday.

Now this is a lovely story, but it seems to me that it has one Bunyan sized hole in it. Big Stone Lake is a large lake covering 12,610 acres and stretching 26 miles long, but it is a really shallow lake. At it's max, Big Stone Lake is only 16 feet deep. I would think a boat big enough to carry Paul alone would displace enough water that he would be scraping the bottom, if not completely stuck, but then you add a 110 ton rock too. I don't think that boat is going to be able to navigate Big Stone Lake. I wonder what happened to his boat... and boat trailer.

On the plus side. The anchor is next to the county museum. We didn't go in the actual museum, but they had some kind of wild bird exhibit thing in a separate building that was actually very interesting. They had a large and varied collection of taxidermied birds and an informational CD about 10 minutes long to guide you through the collection.

Portland's Bunyan Added to National Register of Historic Places

Photo by Rozanne.

Portland, Oregon's famous Paul Bunyan statue has been added to the National Register of Historic Places and recognized as a "well-crafted example of roadside architecture." The statue was unveiled in 1959 to celebrated Oregon's 100th birthday as part of the Oregon Centennial Exposition. He stands 31 feet tall. Coincidentally, he will be celebrating his 50th birthday this Valentine's Day.

Portland's Bunyan is not the first Paul Bunyan on the National Register, however. That honor would go to Bemidji, Minnesota's Paul and Babe, which were built in 1937.

Find out more from The Oregonian.
Read the Bemidji Pioneer's response to the "puny" crack.

Thanks to my wife's friend Becky for the scoop.

Babe's Completed Makeover

A little while back I posted about renovations being done to Brainerd's Babe the Blue Ox. Recently, Josh Porter of Avalon Studios uploaded a bunch of photos of his work to Flickr. He has a set dedicated to the Babe makeover, which includes the above before and after. It even has a shot from inside Babe. He did some excellent work and this should help keep Babe around for another 50 years... hopefully.

And, just because I didn't post enough links, here's another link.
Slideshow of Babe makeover

a little late, but... Happy Holidays!

Giant Mermaid

October 11, 2008 - Mounds View, MN



After seeing the adirondack chairs in Minneapolis, we ran up to Mounds View to see the mermaid. The mermaid was built in 1967 out of fiberglass by Robert Johnson as an advertisement for the Mermaid Supper Club. The place is now known as The Mermaid Entertainment and Event Center. The event center has a sports bar, bowling alley, convention center, hosts wedding receptions, and is connected to an AmericInn Hotel. The mermaid stands 30 feet tall and is on top of the building.

As my wife says, "I don't think you'd get away with a half-naked chick on a building these days." She really puts the "mounds" in Mounds View.

St. Urho

August 16th, 2008 - Menahga, MN



This one is kind of strange and, for this blog, that's really saying something.

The legend of St. Urho goes that a long time ago in Finland the grape crop was being destroyed by grasshoppers. Urho drove away the grasshoppers using his booming voice by chanting "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!", which translates to "Grasshopper, grasshopper, go from hence to Hell!"

St. Urho's day is celebrated on March 16th by wearing royal purple and Nile green, drinking beer (even green and purple beer) and wine, and feasting on mojakka, which is basically just soup. The plaque below this St. Urho statue even describes a celebration where Finnish women and children gather around the shores of the many lakes in Finland and chant what St. Urho chanted. All the while, the men dress in green costumes and gather on the hills overlooking the lakes and, basically, act like grasshoppers and slowly disappear to change into purple costumes. Then the polka and drinking begins.

Now this is where it gets weird.

"What", you say, "that wasn't weird already?"



The legend of St. Urho can be traced as far back as the 1950's to a region known as Northern Minnesota. It seems most of those familiar with the legend credit Richard Mattson of Virginia, MN as the creator. It was in 1953 while working at Ketola's department store in Virginia when Mattson first spun his tale. He was being teased by his Irish co-workers that the Finns didn't have any great saints like St. Patrick, so Mattson made up a story about a St. Urho. The women of the store threw a party in the coffee room and Gene McCavic wrote a poem for St. Urho. And thus the legend began.

In 1956, the media got a hold of it. The local paper, the Mesabi Daily News, wrote about it and in the years since St. Urho has been featured in newspapers around the country.

The legend and holiday we know today is a little different than Richard Mattson originally told it. First of all, the celebration was originally supposed to be in May, but Finns wanted to move it to rival St. Patrick's day and get a head start on the green beer (no doubt the next day they will suddenly be Irish like most of the country). More notably, Mattson's original tale told of how Urho used his powerful voice, which he obtained by drinking "feelia sour" (sour whole milk) and "kala mojakka" (fish soup), to cast out poisonous frogs from Finland. Somehow Dr. Sulo Havumäki, a psychology professor at Bemidji State College (now Bemidji State University) had influence over the legend and the story changed to grasshoppers. Some even credit Havumäki as the creator of the legend. His name is on the plaque below the St. Urho statue.

Richard Mattson passed away in 2001, but his legend of St. Urho lives on. St. Urho's Day is celebrated in a number of Minnesota towns, including Finland, MN (they have an Urho sculpture too), and in Finnish towns across the country, like Butte, MT and Hood River, OR and several others. The legend has even spread into Canada and reached all the way back to Finland, where you can find more than one St. Urho's Pub.

In 1975, the city of Menahga commissioned a Minneapolis sculptor to carve a statue of Urho out of a 1-ton block of oak, but they got swindled. Dude must have been a contractor. In 1982, a traveling chainsaw sculptor named Jerry Ward took the block and created a 12-foot tall sculpture of St. Urho holding a pitch fork with a giant grasshopper speared on the end of it. That carving took a beating from the weather and termites and was replaced by the current fiberglass recreation. The old wood carved statue was moved to a mausoleum in a local cemetery.

For more info:
SaintUrho.com
St. Urho on Wikipedia
Roadside America

Paul Bunyan Bowl

March 19th, 2008 - Baxter, MN



This was our last stop on this long, wonderful day of Big Stuff that began with a stop in Princeton to see a Happy Chef that has found a new gig. This Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox stand outside of Paul Bunyan Bowl in Baxter, MN. The bowling alley is owned by the same family that used to own the Paul Bunyan Amusement Center, which closed in 2003, but much of it remains in use.



This Paul is a Muffler Man. The defining characteristic of a Muffler Man are the hands, with the right palm up and the left palm down. This type of Muffler Man is usually referred to as a Bunyan or Lumberjack Muffler Man. This Paul was previously in Sullivan, MO, where he clutched an ax. It was purchased, restored, and moved to Baxter sometime in 2003 or 2004 and now holds a bowling ball in his right hand. He also sports a lovely pair of Nike boots. I had no idea Nike made boots, especially in that size. He must have had to special order them. Babe looks to be munching on bowling pins.



Tip: Keep Babe away from your bowling pins.

Babe the Blue Ox

March 19th, 2008 - Brainerd, MN



This Babe used to be part of the Paul Bunyan Center in Baxter, MN. The Paul Bunyan Center opened in 1950. The centerpiece of the Center was a 26-foot tall statue of Paul Bunyan that greeted children by name. In 2003, the Center closed due to the high cost of running the park. A local business, This Old Farm, bought Paul and Babe and many of the rides and moved them out to their property 7 miles east of Brainerd. Soon the amusement park reopened as Paul Bunyan Land.

Now you see, I knew that Paul and Babe had been moved to a farm east of Brainerd. And I knew that the farm was on highway 18 somewhere. What I didn't know, or realize, was that they were still in amusement park form. I had kind of figured that they had been "saved" by somebody and moved out to their property where they would sit, undemolished. I was somewhat right. I could have figured this all out with a little bit of research, but I thought I had it all figured out already.

It turns out that Paul Bunyan Land is only open from Memorial Day through Labor Day and is closed for the winter. I guess it's just not as amusing when you can't feel your fingers. I was a little concerned that this stop on our trip might not work out, but I stand by the trip regardless. Babe stands out in the parking lot to greet visitors, so we were able to get plenty of pictures with Babe. (You can see that he still had lights on him from the holidays.) You have to pay to go inside the park to see Paul. That's fine, I like Babe better anyway.



We tried to see if we could get a peak of something Bunyan from outside the chain-link fence, but, apparently, Paul either hibernates or is a flight risk as he is all caged up in the off season. So we didn't end up getting to see this Paul Bunyan, but we did see Babe and that's a plus. We aren't concerned about it. We can find a way to get out to Brainerd some summer and actually see Paul.

Tip: Try visting in the summer.

Sea Serpent

March 19, 2008 - Crosby, MN



Native American legend, or a local marketing campaign, has it that a creature named Kanabec has been living in what is now Serpent Lake. There is a seeming lack of evidence to support the existence of such a creature in Serpent Lake, but that only begs the question, what is the life expectancy of a northern Minnesota sea monster? I mean, I don't know how far back these Native American legends date, but I'm guessing that that would be one really old sea serpent if he/she were still alive today. It's likely that this serpent is now "swimming with the fishes", which makes a sighting by your average fisherman difficult.

This very colorful statue was erected in 1977 in a park on the east end of Serpent Lake. It stands about 20-feet tall.

Crosby is also home to the Viking (not the football team ... mostly) themed Nordic Inn Medieval B&B.

Here's an interesting bit of trivia about the town of Crosby that I found on Wikipedia.

"In the 1932 local elections, the voters of Crosby elected Karl Emil Nygard as President of the Village Council and thus became the first city in the United States to have a Communist mayor."

Was Kanabec a Communist? Or perhaps his/her disappearance was part of some kind of Communist cover up. We will probably never know.

Robin Hood

March 19th, 2008 - Garrison, MN



This giant Robin Hood is located just north of Garrison on Highway 169. He stands guard over the gate to Sherwood Forest, a private RV resort. Considering that the requirements to stay at Sherwood Forest seem to be that you need to own an RV and a lot in the forest, it would appear that Robin Hood may have deserted his cause. I hope there's a good explanation, but we couldn't get him to talk.

Big Ole

July 4th, 2006 - Alexandria, MN



It's the 4th of July and we are heading to my aunt's house on South Turtle Lake near Underwood, MN. We decide to leave early so we have some time to stop and see some big stuff on the way. It was a beautiful summer day as we pulled into Alexandria on our way to see Ole Oppe, it was maybe a little on the cool side but it was still the morning.

Alexandria claims to be "The Birthplace of America". It's a claim that is surrounded by a bit of a controversy and perhaps a bit of conspiracy. It dates back to 1898 when a farmer in nearby Kensington found a 28ft viking statue with this claim written on it tangled in the roots of a tree in his field.

That doesn't sound right. Hold on. Ah yes, he found a very large stone with some strange writing on it tangled in the roots of a tree in his field. It turned out to be a viking runestone that proved the vikings were in Minnesota before Columbus had thought he landed in India. Many people believed this to be a fake. Others believed that it was real. Controversy swelled and the farmer's family was ostracized. The Smithsonian had even showed interest in the runestone and even had it on display in Washington. Later the Smithsonian denounced the runestone and returned it a bit scratched up by their "experts". (Expert thugs if you ask me.) Is the Smithsonian right and the runestone is a fake? Or are they involved in a pro-Columbus cover-up? We may never know.

Big Ole stands to acknowledge Alexandria's claim. He is displayed in a small park about a block from the Runestone Museum.

http://www.runestonemuseum.org/

On the way out of town we stopped and bought some ice cream treats. See, ice cream and big stuff!

World's Largest Fishing Bobber

June 18th, 2006 - Our first stop for the project.

We went to visit my wife's grandfather at his home near Nisswa, which is also very close to Pequot Lakes. In the afternoon we had some time to get away and head into Pequot Lakes. While there we went into a couple gift shoppy type places, got some ice cream, and looked at a big stuff. Ice cream and big stuff is a combination we really like. Pelican Rapids is also a great place for ice cream and big stuff.

The World's Largest Fishing Bobber, or Paul Bunyan's Fishing Bobber as I've also seen it called (I don't know why Paul would write Pequot Lakes on his fishing bobber, but ok.), was the city's water tower until 2000 when it was replaced. The fishing bobber still stands, obviously, but is empty.