KETTLE FALLS- The familiar history of the Kettle Falls Hotel begins with timber cruiser Ed Rose, who assessed forestland for logging and built the remote hostelry along the Minnesota-Canadian border between 1910 and 1913.
But Rose was not the first person to envision a hotel at the historic portage between Namakan and Rainy lakes.
Sixteen years earlier, a North Country explorer named Wyman French was building what a Tower newspaper described as a “substantial hotel” at Kettle Falls. Within days, French had a boat bound for Crane Lake and was heading north with his family to open the new establishment.
Then, almost as quickly as the business opportunity appeared, traffic began flowing somewhere else.
French’s forgotten venture emerged from a review of 1890s newspaper accounts and public records that together provide a glimpse of an earlier attempt to turn Kettle Falls into a commercial center.
French was no stranger to the country north of Lake Vermilion. A December 1892 land notice identified him as a Tower resident and named him as a witness for a timber claim in Township 67-16, now part of Crane Lake Township.
The following fall, French joined Dr. L.B. Tooley and Biwabik resident Andrew Wilson on an extended trip through the Rainy Lake country. The men traveled from Tower by steam launch across Lake Vermilion, crossed the portage at Vermilion Dam, and continued by canoe through a chain of lakes toward Namakan and Rainy lakes.
Their report helped feed the excitement over newly discovered gold near Black Bay. Under the headline “Our New El Dorado,” the Minneapolis Journal reported in October 1893 that six parties were already mining gold at Black Bay in what it described as “good paying quantities.”
The newspaper said French and his companions believed coal, gold, and silver would be discovered throughout the country in great quantities. They predicted a rush equal to or greater than those that had followed discoveries on the Gogebic and Mesabi iron ranges.
The claims proved considerably richer than the mines. But in the closing months of 1893, the Rainy Lake country appeared poised to become the next great northern Minnesota boom district.
French apparently saw an opportunity that did not require him to find gold. Prospectors, machinery, freight, and supplies all had to travel through a difficult chain of roads, lakes, and portages to reach the new gold field. Kettle Falls appeared likely to become a crucial transfer point along the way.
On March 22, 1894, the Tower-based Vermilion Iron Journal reported that French was building a “substantial hotel at Kettle Falls.” It added that he had a tugboat on the way that he intended to place on the Crane Lake portion of the route.
Other entrepreneurs were making plans of their own. A week later, the newspaper reported that H. Kennedy was stocking a store at Kettle Falls and had traveled through Tower on his way to Duluth to purchase merchandise.
French’s boat arrived that same week.
“The boat being put in Crane lakes by Wyman French arrived last evening and will be transported to its destination immediately,” the Journal reported on March 29. “Mr. French and family are in the city on their way to Kettle Falls, where they open a hotel.”
The awkward wording apparently omitted a “will,” but the meaning was clear. The venture had advanced beyond talk. Construction was reportedly underway, the boat had arrived, and the French family was heading to Kettle Falls to operate the hotel.
A state census taken the following year helps fill in the family portrait. French was 57, and his household included his wife, Elizabeth, and sons John and Walter. At the time of the Kettle Falls venture, John would have been about 19 and Walter about 16.
The hotel stood to benefit from a coordinated transportation line being organized between Tower and Rainy Lake City. Under the plan, boats would carry passengers and freight across Lake Vermilion, stages and wagons would make the overland transfer to Crane Lake, and another vessel, presumably French’s, would continue to Kettle Falls. The steamer Walter Lloyd would take travelers from the falls to Rainy Lake City.
That arrangement would have made Kettle Falls an unavoidable stop. Travelers might need a meal, a bed, supplies, or simply somewhere to wait while freight and boats were shifted around the portage.
By June, the route was operating and carrying mail several times a week. Unfortunately for French, travelers had already discovered a shortcut.
On June 14, the Journal reported that the route through Kettle Falls was less popular than an alternative through Kabetogama and Black Bay. The Walter Lloyd would begin running through Black Bay, while the Crane Lake boats connected with teams using an overland portage.
“Everyone claims this will be an enormous saving over the route mapped out in the early season via Kettle Falls and Rainy Lake,” the newspaper reported.
The change undercut the role French had envisioned for Kettle Falls as a principal transfer point. Whether French finished and opened his hotel remains unknown, but its prospective customer base was being routed around it only weeks after his family headed north.
By June 1895, the state census found French and his family back in Township 62-18 near the western end of Lake Vermilion. His occupation was recorded simply as “Stopping Place,” suggesting that he was again, or perhaps for the first time, providing lodging and services along another North Country travel route.
French did not entirely abandon the Namakan country. In January 1897, he received a federal patent for 103 acres near Beast Lake, several miles west of Kettle Falls. The property was not the site of the present hotel.
French died in Duluth the following year at age 61. According to a Duluth newspaper account, his death came with one final burst of the audacity that had carried him through the North Country. Despite having heart trouble, he entered the old men’s race at a policemen’s picnic in Zenith Park.
French won the race, accepted congratulations, gasped several times, and collapsed. He died before assistance could be provided.
His Kettle Falls hotel disappeared even more quietly. No known photograph, advertisement, or firsthand account of a stay has surfaced, and the surviving hotel has no known connection to French’s venture.
Still, the newspaper record shows that long before Ed Rose built the hotel that stands today, Wyman French had recognized the commercial promise of Kettle Falls. He brought in a boat, moved his family north, and prepared to welcome the rush.
The gold did not live up to its billing, and the travelers found a shorter route. But for a few months in 1894, French appeared ready to write the first chapter in the history of lodging at Kettle Falls.