Poplar Lake History

Trail Center: The Flavell Family Years – 1948-1963

2010-10-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

Located at the east end of Poplar Lake along side of the Gunflint Trail is a small business place where workers and travelers rest and refresh themselves. This has always been so, and will probably always be so.

It was love a first sight when Will Flavell first saw Trail Service Center in March of 1948. He had brought his family to Pike Lake Resort for a vacation and fell in love with the lakes and woods of the Gunflint. Bev Johnson, an owner and realtor, took Will up the Gunflint to see the property. That winter had been mighty tough and some say the snow was so deep that only the rooftops were visible. Either Bev was a good salesman, or Will had that gleam in his eyes, the look of a dream coming true. Will said, “I’ll take it.” (Read More)

Rolf Hugenvik, Poplar Lake Summer Home Owner- 1925-2009

2009-02-27T03:53:00.000-08:00

Ina Hugenvik- Rolf Hugenvik (Huggie) was born in 1925 and served in the Army during WWII. While stationed in the Philippines, he saw a picture in a Sunday news magazine of a northern lake with blue sky and pointy evergreen trees. He wrote his mother that he would like to have a cabin some day on a lake like that. Fast forward to 1948: His parents happened to know Doc Remple’s wife and somehow made it to the Gunflint Trail to visit her. (read more)

A Brief History of Kloek's Island- Poplar Lake

2008-08-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

Jim Kloek-The history of the Kloek family on Poplar Lake began in October of 1937 when my parents, Dell and Mernie Kloek, spent their honeymoon at Rockwood Lodge. The cabin they rented is still there, and still being rented. After the war ended, they returned to Poplar Lake, and in 1947 purchased from the owner of Northwoods Lodge a rustic cabin at what is now 7991 Gunflint Trail. (At the time the lodge owner was gradually reducing the size of Northwoods by selling off cabins at each end of his property.) (read more)

Growning Up on a Poplar Lake Island

2008-08-22T03:43:00.001-07:00

Nancy Olmem-My family purchased our Poplar Lake Island cabin on Memorial weekend in 1952. Neighbors of ours in Minneapolis, Del and Mernie Kloek, had a cabin for sale on Poplar Lake and invited us to check out their cabin. It was not what my parents were looking for, but after looking at many properties they were shown the island. It was love at first sight and became our new summer residence. (read more)

Ollie O'Brien Greco- Red Pines Outpost

2008-07-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

The mid 1930's -the Gunflint Trail was a winding dirt road, electrical power and phone service along the trail was still decades away. Mainly loggers, CCC workers, and several resort families populated the area. It was during this era that Ollie O'Brien and her future husband, Jimmy Greco, purchased property on a remote point of land between Little Ollie and Poplar lakes, south of the inlet from Poplar into Little Ollie Lake. Located one half mile from the nearest road, their new property was accessible only by traveling across Poplar Lake. (read more)

Sam Seppala- Saw Mill at Trail Center

2008-06-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

Born in Finland on July 24, 1900, Sam Seppala came to the United States as infant. He completed the third grade and began working in the logging business. By the time he was 20, he had a fleet of five trucks. Sam had camps in Buyck & Cousin, MN and hauled logs to Bailly's Mill in Virginia, MN.

Mayme, Gladys and Sam in front of Trail Center

In 1924 he married Mayme Holkho and on December 24, 1925 they had Gladys. The couple had three more children that died as babies and Mayme had several miscarriages. The family moved to the Grand Marais area in 1936, where Sam and his brother, David, started a camp at Pike Lake. In 1938, they brothers split up and the Seppalas moved up the Gunflint Trail to Poplar Lake at the site of what is now Trail Center Lodge. (Read More)

Moe's Cabin

2008-06-16T10:18:00.001-07:00

It was during our annual trek to the Gunflint Trail that we stumbled upon the little red cabin on Poplar Lake. We were camping next to our cousins on Flour Lake as we had for the past 4 or 5 summers. Anyway, my dad decided to take the family for a "Sunday drive" north up the trail when we spotted the For Sale sign just before Rockwood Lodge. The year was 1964, and I was a 14 year old in love - with the northwoods. (read more)

Boundary Country Trekking

2008-06-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

Shortly after moving from Chicago to their family owned property, Youngs Island, on the Gunflint Trail in 1974, Barbara and Ted Young started several business ventures. These ventures were to grow into Boundary Country Trekking Ltd. (BCT). Their first venture Mid Trail Services provided maintenance and construction services to Gunflint Trail summer cabin owners. Also Ted's canoe guiding services, which he began many years previously as a teenager, continued. (read more)

Old Northwoods Lodge

2008-06-13T04:42:00.000-07:00

Old Northwoods Lodge sits on the site of the original Northwoods Lodge, one of the founding resorts on the Gunflnt Trail. In the early 1930s, Dr. Rempel, a Russian CCC Camp Director, owned and operated the Northwoods Lodge, a premier hunting and fishing destination for visitors from the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, and Chicago.

In 1937, fire claimed the first lodge, and another was built in its place the next year. The original native stone firepalce, which was part of the second lodge, still stands beside the new cedar log lodge. In the heyday of the 1940s and 1950s, there were 22 cabins at the Northwoods Lodge resort. In the late 1950s, the property changed hands, and E.H. Ruidl became the new owner.

When the lodge burned again in 1965, the resort folded.

Over the years, several of the outlying cabins and lakeshore were sold, and in 1990, when present owner Gale Quistad bought the property, there were seven cabins remaining and no lodge. "It looked like a ghost town from the movies," explains Gale. "It has been unattended for 25 years, and if I was going to open it up as a resort again, I had my work cut out for me." Gale worked for the telephone company for many years and remodeled a cabin at a time in the hours when he wasn't working. He completed and opened about one cabin a year for the next five years. Gale met Yelena Yevseyeva while vacationing in Russia, and sometime later they were married. Yelena immigrated to the United States and made her new home here on the Gunflint Trail. Now they two of them had a big project about to begin: it was finally time to build a new lodge.

Echo Ridge

2008-06-13T03:19:00.001-07:00

7853 GUNFLINT TRAIL – POPLAR Lake
Owners: Harvey & Joan Perusse-Purchased July 1976

Our property consists of 5.5 acres of land with 350 feet of lakeshore. The Gunflint Trail bisects the property, east to west, with approximately 1.5 acres on the south side of the trail, facing the lake. Nor’wester lodge is to our east, Windigo lodge is to our west.
The first deed recorded on our abstract shows George Signalness filed on June 26, 1891, paying the princely sum of $206.15. The property consisted of several thousand feet of lakeshore which was acquired in 1934 by Alice and Carl Brandt Sr. The Brandt’s divided the property into smaller parcels in the early 1940’s, selling to Victor Abrahamson, A. J. Eaton, Frank Arco and Richard & Earnest Heidenrick. (read more)

Dorothy Young's Island

2008-06-13T03:19:00.000-07:00

Dorothy Young's Island is a fifteen acre island located near the middle of Poplar Lake on Government Lot 1, Sec 1 (lot with the cabin), and Government Lot 12 Sec 1, T64-2W; Government Lot 8, Sec 6 and Lot 3, Sec 7, T64-1W. It is one of thirty-two islands on the lake. The island's eight-tenth of an acre mainland boat landing is located along the Gunflint Trail west of Windigo Lodge at T64N, R1W, Sec. 6 Government Lots6& 7. (read more)