my name is Haley your guide to All Things quirky in Minnesota's past your Guide to the superior shipwreck the legend of saint urho ancient agates the root beer lady the chief Buffalo Memorial project and to the history of duluth's doomed Winter Olympics we need a time machine would be great yes I would like a time machine myself who hosted the 1932 Winter Olympics don't look it up on Wikipedia you'll ruin the surprise but here's a Hint it wasn't Duluth Minnesota foreign welcome to Minnesota Historia I'm Haley your Guide to the history of duluth's doomed Winter Olympics oh hello there on January 10 1929 the Duluth Herald reported city leaders in Duluth were making a bid for the 1932 Olympics and why not Duluth has snow it has ice it has some hills especially when compared to other cities in the state but and I am just playing devil's advocate here are those Hills big enough if you average the elevations of our Peaks and valleys we're actually the fifth flattest state in the country we're flatter than Kansas let that sink in for a second flatter then Kansas on the other hand those early Olympics were much smaller Affairs in 1932 only 251 athletes from 17 countries competed in Seven Sports Plus a couple of demonstration Sports which were just Sports they did for fun they give you a faker smaller metal and in 1930 Duluth was the 90th largest city in the entire country so does that mean that this is doable maybe let's take a closer look at the sports you've got your figure skating your speed skating and your bobsled your ice hockey your cross-country skiing your ski jumping and your Nordic combined which is just cross-country skiing plus Ski Jumping yeah I know it's weird but that's literally it only a couple of these Sports require any sort of real elevation but what about the demonstration Sports in 1932 you've got curling and dog sled racing yeah I know curling and dog sled racing those are right up duluth's alley maybe Duluth can pull this off so in 1929 the city leaders of Duluth decided sure what the hey let's throw our mukluks into the ring put together one of these bids then there tell those nice Olympic folks over there in Switzerland that duluth's got a couple of not too bad things going for itself right here but still it seems like such a long shot maybe I'm being too hard on to lose chances to gain some perspective I visited the Duluth Curling Club they were hosting a party for duluth's homegrown Olympic Superstars at the U.S curling team I wanted to know if Duluth could host this thing today should Duluth host the Winter Olympics absolutely yes really that ain't a dumb question I think that's legit we obviously have a world-class Curling Club long tracks got to be out on the big lake we have enough hockey rinks it would be wonderful but I don't think so yeah we probably don't have the money to do that I don't know if we have the infrastructure I'd like to say yes but I think the uh the scale of it these days is pretty insane so it might be a little difficult but it would be really awesome to have it in my hometown Duluth would be an amazing host for the Winter Olympics I mean it'd be a little bit tricky with some of the uh skiing events the Winter Olympics today are a far cry from what happened in 1932. we need a time machine would be great yes I would like a time machine myself well there you have it that's settled absolutely nothing maybe we should visit some of the venues the city leaders of Duluth were planning to use this is where the olympic curling event would have been held no not here in the parking lot we take our curling seriously here this is the original location of the Duluth Curling Club built in 1913 it was the largest curling facility on Earth and why wouldn't it be then and now Duluth has always been the curling capital of America on its lower level the original Duluth Curling Club boasted 12 sheets of ice and seating for a thousand Spectators the second level had a ring for ice skating and hockey but that wasn't the only ice in town due to the growing popularity of hockey the amphitheater opened across the street in 1924. it offered seating for more than 4 000 hockey fans and today it's a grocery store there's a museum quality historical display in their entryway above the motorized grocery carts and you can still see a portion of the old Amphitheater building along London Road it's right here underneath the cold cuts and potato salad the University of Minnesota duluth's first ever hockey team played here they were nicknamed the pedagogues it's a word that means teachers and not whatever you are thinking as for ski jumping Duluth head Chester bowl a Park established in 1888 by 1908 the Duluth ski club was already hosting the national Ski Jumping championships they hosted again in 1915 and 12 000 people filled grandstands and bleachers built for the occasion that original ski jump flew down in 1916 but don't worry big chester was built in 1924 with plenty of time for the Olympic bid in the northern half of Minnesota only two Ski Jumping facilities remain one is here in Cloquet and the other is on the Iron Range in Colerain this is one of the ski jumps still standing in Cloquet Duluth tore down the last of their ski jumps at Chester Bowl in 2014 and yeah a lot of people are still bitter about it why can't we have nice ski jump things let's get back to the events the John bear Grace sled dog race which usually starts in Duluth is considered the best sled dog event in the lower 48 and you can't throw a snowball into Loop without hitting a cross-country ski Trail as for bobsled run Duluth didn't have one of those but the city didn't have Spirit Mountain either that wouldn't open until 1974. so there's a place to put the bobsled track maybe incredibly it seems like Duluth does have enough venues to host this thing but what about hotels a common complaint in the early 1920s was that all of duluth's biggest hotels were aging and located in a less desirable part of town its smaller hotel from Rolling boarding rooms and Canal Park had industry on its mind more than tourists then in 1925 came the Hotel Duluth opulent 14 stories tall it boasted 450 rooms that would have been on the city leaders Minds as they promised the international Olympic Committee enough rooms to accommodate 20 000 visitors speaking of visitors in 1929 the Hotel Duluth briefly became famous thanks to an unusual guest a 400 pound bear who was just traveling through town he liked the smell of what the Hotel Duluth was cooking he smashed a plate glass window and ransacked the coffee shop so they shot him made all the papers he was stuffed and displayed in their brand new Black Bear Lounge that is not how the Hotel Duluth planned to treat its Olympic guests so it seems like Duluth had everything in place to make a bid there was only one thing standing in their way so were a lot of other cities including Montreal Oslo Denver Minneapolis Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park on April 10 1929 the international Olympic Committee made its unanimous decision they chose Lake Placid and they'd choose them again in 1980 heartbreaking oh but don't worry the story gets worse the Duluth Curling Club moved to the deck in 1976 leaving their grand old building vacant they would suffer a fire in 1984. in 1939 the amphitheater was still going strong when its roof started collapsing from all the snow and this happened during a game fortunately it all happened slowly enough that all before people escaped injury just a reminder here again Duluth doesn't have any more ski jumps at least the Hotel Duluth is still here it's Gray Salon Plaza now and Duluth still has the snow and the ice and some hills those haven't gone anywhere in 1936 the Winter Olympics permanently added downhill skiing as an event thus ending the dream of Duluth ever hosting Winter Olympics but maybe and just hear me out before you dismiss the idea out right maybe we could host a World's Fair do they still do those I think so all right a World's Fair [Music] don't go away we have more episodes of Minnesota Historia coming up [Music] the Great Lakes are home to more than 6 000 shipwrecks like Erie has the most with 2000 followed by Lake Michigan at 1500 like Superior is home to just 400 wrecks and it would be tasteless to turn this into some sort of ghoulish competition but this lake has all the best shipwrecks and it's not even close today ask people to name a shipwreck on the great lakes and most people will say the Edmund Fitzgerald it's famous it's a tragedy with 25 foot waves taking down the ship and its entire 29 person crew it's the largest ship to ever wreck on Lake Superior it happened somewhat recently November 10th 1975 and Gordon Lightfoot sings a really sad song about it honestly the saddest part is that it was too rough to feed him and if that's your favorite shipwreck story you're not alone but I have five more stories I'd like you to consider [Music] listen to them memorize them share them at cocktail parties to Win Friends and Influence People [Music] the SS onoko was the first ironhold steamer on Lake Superior she's the grand mother for all bulk Freighters that you see today but in early September of 1915 she ran aground in duluth's Harbor nothing to worry about she freed herself but then on September 15th the anoko leaving Duluth with a load of grain sprung a leak near Knife River again nothing to worry about I mean the ship was sinking but the entire crew calmly and safely Abandoned Ship before it disappeared and then everyone promptly forgot where they left it how do you lose a whole ship in a lake it happens all the time fortunately we have people who specialize in finding them again this is Jerry Eliason a shipwreck Hunter and photographer the iroko was the first offshore wreck that we found we vowed that no matter what we weren't going to stop looking for the adult [ -_-_ ] till we found it he discovered her back in 1988. bought 149 dollars on paper graph fish finder and decided that if we went back and forth enough times we'd sooner find it [Music] foreign [Music] I like Jerry don't worry we'll talk to him again later before the last Voyage of the Benjamin Noble a customs officer in Conneaut Ohio told her Captain I should not like to ride with you you're overloaded that thing was way too heck overloaded I mean it was almost sinking at the dock it was young Captain eisenhart's first commission and he couldn't say no to all those tasty iron rails tasty iron rails so he left for Duluth promising his crew they take it easy they made it all the way to Knife River Minnesota it was a late April snowstorm yeah they had 12 15 foot waves out there the Benjamin Noble so disappeared there were no survivors and that was another one of those went missing wrecks went missing ship is one that went down without Witnesses and went down with all hands finding them is extra difficult it wasn't until 2004 that Jerry and his team discovered the Benjamin Noble by that time she'd been missing for 90 years the Benjamin Noble was definitely one of the Holy Grails or Loch Ness monsters that's what shipwreck enthusiasts say when it's a ship that has extra significance maybe it's the name Knife River that keeps dooming these ships can we get a town on like Superior that sounds a little more gentle [Music] okay the lotta Bernard was a steamer with paddle wheels so possibly too cute for Lake Superior a lot of left Thunder Bay October 29 1874 loaded with 200 stacks of flour 60 kegs of fish one horse and she passed Castle danger huge waves pounded her deck smashed her cabins only her smokestack and deck remained of the 15 people on board 12 would survive no word on what happened to the horse survivors rode ashore on a Lifeboat and took shelter in an Ojibwe Camp so there's a lot of burnout yeah that would be a nice one to find the little one that makes it harder you know small wooden ships on rugged bottoms are really tough today the Lada Bernard remains a ghost ship but don't worry that's just what we call shipwrecks that haven't been found yet so there's nothing scary about ghost ships at all the SS Hudson is the scariest ghost ship story I have ever heard the Hudson left Duluth September 15 1901. by the time she reached the Apostle Islands the weather turned foul the next day Lighthouse Keepers in Eagle River Michigan reported seeing Hudson dead in the water enlisting badly eventually she rolled over and sank taking all 25 crew members with her but here's the spooky Parts every year on September 16th the anniversary of her sinking BSS Hudson rises from her watery grave and appears to Sailors on Lake Superior no I didn't believe this either until I read an account by a tugboat captain in the 1940s this Captain along with a crewmate reported seeing a rusty ship covered in brown slime heading directly towards them narrowly avoiding a collision the captain boarded the ship to see if the crew was in distress they were they were ghosts they told the captain they were doomed to relive the sinking of their ship every September 16th and rightfully in a panic the tugboat captain dove into the frigid water to get away from the Hudson quickly very very quickly the Hudson was missing for 118 years until Jerry Eliason founder in 2019 at a depth of 800 feet it's one of the deepest shipwrecks ever found in Lake Superior two years in a row it was our intention to be out there on the anniversary of the sinking to disprove the story that it rises on that day and both times we had too rough a weather to go oh God foreign I find this last shipwreck to be the saddest of them all because of a message found in a bottle I'm just going to skip ahead to the bad parts on the evening of December 6 1927 the SS Kamloops was last seen heavily coated with ice steaming towards Isle Royal the 22 men and women aboard were never seen alive again in May 1928 several bodies were found at 12 o'clock point on Isle Royal more were discovered in June for a total of nine that December a Trapper working the shore of Lake Superior in Ontario found a message in a bottle from Alice batridge young Steward who initially Survived The Sinking and swam ashore She Wrote I am the last one left alive freezing and starving to death an Isle Royal in Lake Superior I just want my mom and dad to know my fate that's horrifying the fate of the Kamloops was unknown for 50 years her wreck finally discovered in 1977 with some of the crew members remains still on board well it it's the Final Chapter it's like there's this story that started a hundred years ago 120 years ago and it then it stopped at that point but it's not over the story's not over and then here 110 20 30 years later ah we we got the Final Chapter now if you'll excuse me I have some haunting sea shanties that need listening to say today [Music] this is Finland Minnesota a town of nearly 200 people today is Saint urho's day and the town of Finland is having a parade to honor the country of finland's beloved patron saint it's a wholesome event fun for the whole family I love the parade even when my family's dead I'll still go here cities across the world hold similar celebrations every year to honor Saint erjo it's a lovely tradition except of course the story of Saint urho is all a Web of Lies welcome to Minnesota Historia I'm Haley your Guide to the legend of saint urho [Music] so when I was a kid I thought URLs was real then I was told yeah this is all made up well as far as I know it's true I think he is real I think no this is a Northland um but we call it a fairy tale to those disciples who believe in him he's as real as the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus okay so Center who is actually my uncle Saint urho was invented out of thin air in the mid-1950s by Richard Matson in Virginia Minnesota here is Finland and here's Virginia [Music] I don't like how many of these towns in Minnesota are named after other countries and states Richard Matson and Gene mckavic were co-workers at catola's department store in downtown Virginia mcavic had been ridiculing for Matson because Finland doesn't have any good Saints but in 1950 Finland was 95 Lutheran with almost no Catholics meanwhile Ireland has plenty of Catholics and a patron saint perhaps you've heard of him well I'm seeing Patrick and I uh drove the snakes out of Ireland so my jealous Matson told mikavik Finland has great Saints mckavic asked Madison to name one he couldn't so he made one up so I said we have City orho I told her he drove the poisonous frogs from Finland before the last ice age that's from an interview with Richard Matson recorded by finlogger for the Iron Range Research Center the original Ode to Saint urho was inspired by Matson and written by makavek on a spare sheet of wrapping paper in a wildly offensive approximation of Finnish dialect so let's give a chair in Howard pest way on May 24th Saint urho's Tay yeah according to the original text Finland was overwhelmed by poisonous frogs so Saint urho consumed sour milk and fish soup and his voice became so loud that it scared the frogs away Finland was finally free of frogs and that's exactly how everyone in the world still tells the story to this day well that story is he chased all the Grasshoppers out and saved the grapes he drove away all the Grasshoppers out of Finland The Grasshoppers were eating all the grapes like grasshoppers were eating all the grapes chase down the grass chase them away yep how did he do this well they gave him jello shots grasshoppers jello shots it's hard to keep a good story straight 200 miles to the West a professor in Bemidji Minnesota named sulo havelamaki decided to tweak the tail slightly some people even claim that he invented Sader hoe maybe but he almost certainly added the Grasshoppers and a catchy chant highness Circa highness Circa menatalta High team in English that translates to grasshopper grasshopper go away so now it's grasshoppers instead of frogs and grapes are involved couple more things you should know about Saint urho's day well you gotta dress in purple and green purple for the grapes green for the Grasshoppers somewhere along the line it got changed to the day before St Patrick's Day which gives you one more excuse to go out and drink funny colored beer Menahga Minnesota also has a parade and a really nice statue even nicer than the one in Finland Minnesota 's day is now officially recognized in all 50 states this totally made up fake holiday became so popular here that it eventually immigrated back to Finland where it is celebrated sporadically International so much it'll always be it'll always exist this crazy thing is going to live I just can't help it it's a good thing you do to start a new religion a little bit easy I mean I guess it's nice the Finns have a phony patron saint and an additional excuse to drink but why has this particular story resonated so much with so many fins for so many years well life was hard for Finnish immigrants here in the early part of the 20th century by 1920 18 000 Finns had emigrated to St Louis County in Minnesota they liked our Lakes our trees and our Boulders but the other people here didn't always like them this is Steve sokola you might remember him from earlier playing an accordion and skateboarding at the same time you can trust a man who plays an accordion in skateboards at the same time well this is vague but historically accurate a lot of Finns who are in the minds they struggle to speak the other languages that the other half of the Melting Pot was a part of but I tried to start up their own unions to protect each other and you know mining mining companies didn't like unions at the time a lot of things got blackballed from the mines and started farming in these communities so that's why embarrass and power and places like that are places where Finnish Farmers settled and they couldn't find success at the mine in 1918 a Finnish American named Oli kankanan with lynched in Duluth for being a pacifist fast forward 30 years or 50 or 100 Finn still remember those persecutions they needed a good reason to get together and celebrate each other so someone had to make one up when it's as cold as it is in Minnesota you tend to make up holidays so you've got some reason to stay alive in these cold months so we still have a parade and we have some music and we have vittles you know and uh everybody just kind of hangs out a lot of Finnish people celebrate saint urvles and I'm Finland I'm a Finnish person yeah everybody is finished today even if they aren't yesterday or tomorrow they're today that's a really nice sentiment I think I'm gonna let her have the last word on saint urho even when my family's dead I'll still go here [Music] don't go anywhere there's more quirky stories of Minnesota's history coming up prior to the mural project this walkway was all beige wonderfully base you can see remnants of the beige over there the entire thing always gave me prison Vibes but in a way like it the beige contributed to that it made this not a space where you could picture anything good happening I guess welcome to Minnesota Historia I'm Haley your host of history and this is the chief Buffalo Memorial project I really felt like the space could promote being able to have a broader perspective in understanding and picture of the history that we all share here this is Mary billiard a visual artist in Duluth Minnesota she collaborated with Chief Buffalo's eldest descendants and many other artists to make this project happen the Zeitgeist Center for art they reached out to the indigenous commission indigenous commission submitted a list of topics I don't remember what the other topics were because it was just like Chief Buffalo I'm doing this you see Mary's work all over Duluth she often uses art to uplift underrepresented narratives and chief Buffalo's narrative is seriously underrepresented you know I'd heard the name Chief Buffalo kind of tossed around and I knew we were on seated territory but I wasn't sure what any of that really meant I feel like most people don't know you know I didn't know and chief Buffalo story is the origin story of downtown Duluth but good luck finding him on any of the historical markers in the city or it's public art until now obviously yeah Chief Buffalo um backtrack how do we start it Chief Buffalo was born on Madeleine Island around the year 1759 1759 that's before the Revolutionary War at the time Madeleine Island was supposedly a part of New France New France of course we have to acknowledge this was all Ojibwe land that's why the United States had to make so many treaties this wall is still in progress It's a map of the different treaty territories anywhere you go in the United States it's like there's some sort of treaty that is the law of the land that allows it to exist treaties don't give rights to Native people it's actually the opposite it's the tribes giving rights to settlers basically to exist like in the same space as them Chief Buffalo led the Lake Superior Ojibwe for nearly half a century signing a series of treaties with the United States between 1825 and 1847.

Minnesota territory was established on March 3rd 1849 and Minnesota became a state May 11 1858. in between those two dates you will not be shocked to learn that a lot of Nefarious happened so Minnesota still a territory they've got written into law plans to remove Ojibwe people from Minnesota because they're like look at all this land like this is going to be ours they come up with this scheme and it's like it's documented like they intentionally moved the point at which Ojibwe people could get their allotments which were like you know food rations and things like that because obviously they're like blocking native people from accessing the land and using it themselves so they need allotments and rations for food they move that point up to Sandy Lake Sandy lake is not close to Madeleine island or Lake Superior it's not close to anything look I'm sorry if you lived there now but at the time its remoteness was the whole point of it it's hard to picture when you're talking about it like oh they had to go for a walk to this place well it was months of walking you know and so people went on this journey they get there and the food was intentionally like poison it was literally rotten food and so people died from that and then they had to make the journey back and over 300 people end up dying on this journey it was called the Sandy Lake tragedy or the Ojibwe Trail of Tears killing people off like slowly all intentionally orchestrated by the governor Ramsey who a lot of our places are named after and so cheap Buffalo sawdust he's about 90 something years old he decides he wants to do something about it and gets the support from all the different tribal communities in the region to make this trip to Washington DC to tell the president this just happened our people are being killed here and we don't want to be moved anymore that pictograph that's right there was the picture graph that he carried on his journey to Washington DC symbolically it's basically a representation of all the different tribal leaders kind of like signing off so their hearts and Minds connecting to the crane a lot of people think that the crane represented Chief Buffalo he was actually loon Clan you see the Strand that's coming out of the the eyes basically the vision of the crane connects to whoever is holding the pictograph and so Chief Buffalo is the one that is holding the pictograph and so the art is like this moving piece that like whoever holds it is the voice of all of the folks there so along the way people hear about this elderly man going on this Quest and so people are like expressing their support and word gets to the president and the president meets with him and in that meeting we get the Treaty of 1854 which establishes a lot of the the tribal reservations that we have in our region across Minnesota the Treaty of 1854 guaranteed that Ojibwe people would not be moved West at a later date they also retain their rights to hunt fish and participate in traditional activities of course Minnesota ignored that part of the treaty until they were sued then on the red you see um the different reservations essentially please note that downtown Duluth is not in red on this map in 1854 Chief Buffalo was given his choice of land in northeastern Minnesota I think point of rock was the the point at which it was kind of like look out from here and from this spot to this spot and what now is Duluth the president was like here here's this plot of land and you can use it you know for whatever kind of whatever you want it's Chief Buffalo's reservation he ended up I think giving that plot of land to his son-in-law Benjamin Armstrong and then from there it's kind of like what happened I don't know yeah like it's murky according to the Duluth Herald someone sprinkled an unidentified powder into Armstrong's eyes while he was asleep he went blind seeking money for medical treatment he sold off his land to several Traders at least one of them never even paid him there's a lot of different stories about you know what went on but essentially we're in Duluth now which brings us to 2018 when the Duluth city council renamed Lake Place Park a forgettable string of nouns to gichiodea King which means a grand heart place and so that was another initiative by the indigenous commission that took almost a decade to get through to the city that this would be renamed the chief Buffalo Memorial project began the following year on a beige walkway the cadets gichiodeo King to the lake walk I think once the naming of gidgeyodea King happened things started like setting into Motion in ways that people maybe didn't expect which is the significance of an action like that something as simple as changing a place name suddenly piques people's interest enough to support a project that moves the park a little bit further down or that recognition further down did you do this this feels like maybe a rice field yeah it is so racing we got a powwow a Sugar Bush on the side yeah I didn't do all of them I have help so Community helped paint this one we've got two artists from North Dakota who came up and did this so when I do mural projects we spend a lot of time as like tour guides telling people what is the significance of this project and answering questions so we have the Thunderbird a water Panther and so they're like Ojibwe sort of mermaids we did this community painting session we got the Loon for cheap Buffalo this is Herb fine day and his son um racing this is a youth out of powwow Jonathan Thunder and Tashia heart I wanted it to be immersive and I wanted it to not just talk about like Chief Buffalo but like there's pieces that are like people who are alive here today I think it's Arnie vinyl and Jim Northrop at a Sugar Bush but it's just their feet so and then secretly kind of back back here this is cheap Buffalo smoking his pipe the Buffalo family also really wanted cheap Buffalo to be remembered in this space and to see something about his story here because he does have that kind of Duluth connection so yeah that's why Chief Buffalo's murals are here the thing I like about studying Minnesota History is the feeling that you're traveling through time sometimes it's just a few decades could be more than a century but today we are going all the way back to the beginning now further than that welcome to Minnesota Historia I'm Haley your guide to ancient agates this is most like Minnesota a small town of nearly 3 000 people with a moose a lake a Charming movie theater a mouth-watering pizzeria and for one day every July a Street full of rocks and eager Agate Hunters this is Agate days and these Rock hounds are here for one reason to find a Lake Superior Agate in the Agate Stampede not diamonds not gold agates the common person's gemstones Lakers Minnesota gold this raises questions like why what's the deal here what am I not getting what's so great about these agates why are people so obsessed with them we'll get back to those questions later but first where do like Superior agates come from yes I realize a dump truck brought those particular rocks to this street in Moose Lake I'm talking about the origin of agates in a larger older geological sense for that we have to go back a billion years that's when lava last flowed in northeastern Minnesota as tectonic forces ripped to North America apart and created the superior trough as this lava cooled it left millions of tiny little adorable air pockets inside of it dirty Rusty groundwater flowed into these pockets and deposited layers of quartz and other dissolved minerals over thousands of years your classic Lake Superior Agate is made up of these colorful layers of quartz usually orange red and yellow because they're stained by iron like Superior agates earned their name because they're so often found on the shores of Lake Superior thanks to the last ice age you can also find them in Wisconsin Michigan and Iowa ice ages are like giant free-range Rock tumblers gobbling up our precious goodies and depositing them all over the Midwest but the biggest and arguably the best Lake Superior agates are found just a few miles south of Lake Superior in the gravel of Carlton County Minnesota which is where most lake is most like known to Agate Hunters as the Agate capital of the world and for good reason you've got your Agate days with your Agate Stampede you've got your 108 pound Agate on display in the bank some say it's the largest in the world and you've got the Moose Lake agaton geological center it's a museum and resource center located here in Moose Lake State Park they are pretty aren't they this is Roger beeble a geologist and member of the Carlton County Gem and Mineral Club he helps make Agate days and the Agate Stampede happen this was started 50 years ago and now we've become so big that we have to rent out the Riverside Arena the hockey arena here in Moose Lake I got involved with this my mentor was Tom Olson they started this in 1972 so they asked me if I wanted to do the Agate Stampede as a geologist they knew that I would be able to help out in many things sandstones um this is rhyolite and I said yes and it's been going on since Roger took us to the Agate Stampede secret headquarters where they were loading two trucks with rocks oh the agates we used to buy for a dollar a pound 10 years ago and it went to two dollars a pound that was three dollars a pound plus I have five hundred dollars in quarters and halves that we also put in kids get the quarters and hands so there's our trucks spiffed up and everything they're probably like where the hell is that guy I was just wondering where the hell is that guy these Agate Hunters can be a secretive bunch [Music] I'll just pull up by the white one and then one of you guys will be up there though yep there's no Giants to it otherwear mixing three-quarter inch Rock an inch and a quarter Rock because the agates are that size so they don't stick out like sore thumbs foreign [Music] cubic yards of gravel in those two trucks and then this year 500 pounds of a gets in 500 in quarters I hope it goes good [Applause] [Music] so the agates are mixed in the rocks and the rocks are dumped on the street now who wants to see an agate stampede [Applause] so the kids have a great time here every Rock has a story because picking up these rocks you can tell if they're igneous sedimentary the three types of rocks are metamorphic and where they come from and it tells the whole the geology of that area but we have we have it all here we have all the different types of rocks look at that I just found an agate you want to find your own Agate I do have some tips hunt on sunny days quartz is translucent it Sparkles just a little bit in the Sun and so once you get the eye for it you'll see the translucence you'll see this color and you can find them real easily it all depends on glasses you wear too I can see that from way over there because of translucent gar the gravel is keep an eye out for gravel trucks replenishing roads driveways parking lots for the shoulders of Highways fresh gravel means fresh agates and this big rock here is used for building sewer Mounds there you go see his Agony just found okay don't forget Lake Superior agates were stained by iron look for a rusty red that's the most common color and a like Superior Agate in 1969 the Minnesota Legislature named the Lake Superior AG at the state's official gemstone and so uh Tom Olson actually went down and gave agates to all the members of the State Senate and House and got that voted in as the state Stone free agates is that even legal speaking of bending the law Agate hunting is very much illegal in many places in the state gravel pits now have to post signs for bidding it and you can't hunt for agates in state parks no matter how big or beautiful they might be look I've only been an agate Hunter for about 90 seconds now but even I can tell you why so many people are obsessed with it it's fun to find shiny stuff outside if you find yours on a beach or some overturn gravel you might be the first human person to touch that Agate in its entire billionaire existence think about that a dinosaur might have peed on your agate don't go anywhere we have more episodes of Minnesota Historia coming up [Music] five four three two one imagine if Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had arrived on the moon on July 20th 1969 and had found an ax wielding 79 year old woman selling candy bars and homemade pop that's kind of unexpected I'm just trying to give you some sense of the absolutely magical feeling the paddlers in The Boundary Water canoe area experienced when they discovered the root beer lady welcome to Minnesota Historia I'm Haley your Guide to the root beer lady [Music] is the Boundary Waters canoe area a 1.1 million acre Wilderness on the Canadian border in northern Minnesota and this is Dorothy malter The Boundary Waters last permanent resident she lived here for more than 50 years now she has her own brand of root beer her own museum and a photo with Julia Roberts Julia's on the left she was on a youth group canoe trip to the Boundary Waters and she wasn't famous yet but Dorothy was here's how she got started I come up here in 1930 for the first time with my dad my mother my uncle of course this kind of country was all new to me coming from the city and never going out to picnics or nothing I was never in a canoe till I come up here Dorothy's family spent summers at the Isle of Pines Resort on Knife Lake [Music] is where Dorothy's cabin was after about three or four Summers I decided I wanted to see what it was like in the winter time so I made a trip up here Dorothy was fascinated to see how people lived year-round at the edge of civilization it was mostly all men when I first come up here I was listening to the guys talking about a cutting ice putting up ice of course we used some of their ice in the summertime but we had no idea how they got it up here with great difficulty I used to like to stand by and watch those fellas I think we need ice for us for keeping the root beer cold [Music] Dorothea trained in Chicago to be a nurse but in 1934 she moved to the Isle of Pines Resort for good in 1948 owner Bill Bergman died and left the resort to Dorothy the U.S forest Service offered to buy the resort immediately she politely declined in 1949 Harry Truman banned float Plains and in the mid-1950s she started making her own root beer because she couldn't bring it in Via float plane I used to have pop up here but after the planes quit flying well then I discontinued it because I wasn't about to pack pop over the portages so I had so many uh root beer bottles on hand we got the idea of making root beer [Music] in 1964 Congress passed the Wilderness act and Dorothy was forced to sell a resort to the U.S forest Service they agreed to let her stay on the property temporarily but she never left it can be hard to visualize how our mouth Boundary Waters truly are Dorothy lived 15 miles from the nearest Road motorized Boats were restricted in 1978. snowmobiles in 1984. it took five Overland portages just to get home a Portage is whenever you have to carry your canoe between bodies of water like this guy I always volunteer to carry the paddles Ely this is Knife Lake uh I have a message for Jerry it's worth noting that the forest service actually liked having Dorothy in The Boundary Waters I mean who wouldn't who doesn't like root beer who doesn't like having a nurse in the middle of your giant dangerous Forest yeah they eventually gave her a two-way radio and called her a volunteer in service when she wasn't nursing or gardening or feeding her ducks or visiting her friends who stopped by Dorothy was making her root beer and then giving it away of course she left out a tip jar for donations it was the same way she'd run a resort just barely legal Dorothy's secret recipe wasn't really a secret either she'd buy syrup from a w or the grocery store in Ely then add sugar and yeast the water came from Knife Lake but she had to carry everything else to her Island in fact she was once attacked by a bear while portaging candy bars no not that bear this bear came from behind the bushes and ripped the pack right off her back she tracked it down later the bear was picky didn't even eat all the candy bars only in The Boundary Waters could you buy candy bars in the middle of the woods with teeth marks on them and you'd be happy about it this is Jess edberg the executive director at the Dorothy malter Museum in Ely Minnesota she knows a lot about Dorothy and this is where Dorothy would sell root beer out of and the former Isle of pine Resort I like to call her the root beer lady lady at our Museum we have three of Dorothy's historic cabins after Dorothy's passing in 1986 a group of her friends and supporters Salvage what they could from her property up on Isle of Pines these cabins were dismantled so log by log taking them apart windows out and they were labeled with metal tags and then you can put the puzzle back together exactly the way you had it you can still buy Dorothy's root beer at the Museum and it stores all over Northeastern Minnesota it's always delicious which is a pleasant surprise to some because Dorothy's root beer was sometimes how should I put this Dorothy would occasionally have quality control issues it was not uncommon for people to experience a what you might call a dud bottle the recipe called for her bottled root beer to ferment for at least three days and as much as two weeks given the fact that Dorothy especially in the last 10 years of her life was incredibly busy with visitors coming just to get a bottle of root beer and meet her she might have 200 people stopping by every day and it wouldn't have been uncommon for her to mix up a couple crates of root beer on a Tuesday and then have to serve it on a Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning ferment faster uh if your boys are waiting for root beer I'm all out of it that's okay but there's candy in the house the fun of it of meeting Dorothy of going to Dorothy's islands of finding this Oasis that had candy bars in the middle of nowhere after days of paddling mosquitoes thunderstorms it was phenomenal it was more of an experience than than the taste of the root beer I feel bad that I brought it up she can be inspirational for a lot of different communities especially marginalized communities she really represents women who are resisting the heteronormative gender roles that are kind of put on women sometimes she kind of bucked that system and decided to take her own path and for her to do that in the 30s and 40s is a really big deal [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thanks for watching I'll see you later love you okay bye