Hotel · Kettle Falls (Voyageurs National Park), Minnesota · Built 1913
Kettle Falls Hotel
A plain two-story frame hotel of 1913 at the portage between Namakan and Rainy lakes, reachable only by water; it served commercial fishermen, lumberjacks and Prohibition-era drinkers before becoming part of Voyageurs National Park.
History
In 1912 the timber and power man E. W. Backes finished two dams at the outlet of Namakan Lake, one at Kettle Falls on the American side and one at Squirrel Falls on the Canadian. Boats could no longer pass, so everything moving between the border lakes had to be portaged, and the next year William E. "Big Ed" Rose, a timberman who had acquired the former homestead claim, built a hotel at the landing. It fed and housed the traffic: freight coming up from Crane Lake, prospectors, fish buyers, and later loggers. Between 1913 and 1920 some fifty commercial fishing camps sold their iced catch at the hotel dock, and at the peak 5,000 boxes of fish a week crossed the portage.
Rose sold out in 1918 to Robert S. Williams, who already ran a hotel and nightclub at Ranier; the price is said to have been $1,000 and four barrels of whiskey. Williams was charged more than once with selling liquor during Prohibition, and the nomination notes frankly that there were times when women were available as well as drinks. A highway from Orr to International Falls drew the fish trade away in the 1920s, and the last log tow passed in 1937, but sport fishermen and vacationers kept coming. Electricity arrived by 1935 and an annex in 1946.
After Bob Williams died in 1956, his widow Lil, his stepson Charlie and Charlie's wife Blanche carried on. The hotel was listed on the National Register in 1976 as the new Voyageurs National Park took shape around it, and the Park Service bought it from the family about that time. A thorough renovation followed in 1986–87.
“Through the years as the building settled and freezing and thawing occurred, bowing and sagging gave it a look of impermanence. In reality it remains structurally sound.”
Architecture
The hotel is an L-shaped, two-story frame building without ornament. A one-story screened veranda runs the full length of the south front, facing the boat landing. Decades of frost heave on the thin soil left the floors and walls bowed and sagging; the nominators found it structurally sound and noted that nobody wanted the tilt corrected. Inside, the barroom at the west end kept its 1920s fixtures and photographs, the lobby and stair sat beside it, and the dining room and kitchen filled the east end. Upstairs were eighteen small guest rooms, two of them later turned into bathrooms. The original cedar shingles had already given way to asphalt by 1974.
What to look for
- The full-length screened veranda facing the landing
- Sloping floors left from years of settling
- Barroom fixtures and photographs from the 1920s
- Kettle Falls and Squirrel Falls dams nearby
Setting
The hotel stands on a clearing on the Kettle Falls peninsula, a short walk from the dams and the portage between Namakan and Rainy lakes, inside Voyageurs National Park. No road reaches it; visitors arrive by boat or floatplane. The international border runs through the falls, and because of the way the channel bends this is one of the few places in the lower 48 states where Canada lies to the south.
Timeline
- 1910Ida May Winslow patents the site as a homestead
- 1912E. W. Backes completes the Kettle Falls and Squirrel Falls dams
- 1913Ed Rose builds the hotel at the portage
- 1918Robert S. Williams buys the hotel
- 1946Annex built behind the hotel
- 1976Listed on the National Register; acquired by the National Park Service
- 1986–1987Extensive renovation
Where sources differ
- The price of $1,000 and four barrels of whiskey is a well-known story repeated by Wikipedia; it is not in the nomination.
- Wikipedia says Rose is reputed to have built the north–south wing in 1913, which leaves open whether the rest of the L came later; the nomination treats the whole building as 1913.
- The National Register listing year is 1976 per Wikipedia; the exact date is not legible in the nomination.
