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The Outlaw Bridge
Next summer will be the 100th anniversary of the completion of the bridge, being finished here in 1917. Rotarians on both sides of the border built it to “encourage commerce.” Their vision was valid. Today there’s roughly $19 billion in annual trade between Minnesota and Canada, not all of it on Highway 61 of course.
For a 14-year-old and an active Boy Scout, it sounded like high adventure, so I was one of the first to sign up for the bike expedition along Lake Superior from Duluth to the Canadian border organized by the local Boy Scouts council.
Highway 61 was relatively quiet due to wartime gas rationing during that summer of ’43. All our gear was loaded in a pickup and trailer driven by an adult leader, thus my only burden was my body and heavyweight bike. Like all the other boys, I rode a one-speed with fat tires and a coaster brake; we didn’t have multigeared road bikes in those days. We would travel 150 miles with four days to get there, but just three to return.
Our destination was the Pigeon River and the Minnesota-Ontario border, known then, unofficially, as Sextus City. It featured a roadway crossing nearly 2 miles upstream from where it is today, near Middle Falls, a 70-foot drop, and one of the obstacles bypassed by the 9-mile “Grand Portage” carry. There, we found accommodations for tourists, a Customs House, a store and gas station, and campsites.
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The Outlaw Bridge
A car traverses the new bridge, demonstrating perhaps its solid structure in a photo taken May 6, 1917. When the builders were running out of money, they economized by making the on and off ramps a little steeper than designed.
A rather ordinary steel-truss bridge crossed the river, its approaches clutching the gorge’s steep banks of Precambrian rock. That steel-truss span was just nine years old when we visited. Built in 1934, it was destined to serve 30 years before a new highway and border crossing were commissioned closer to Lake Superior. But before the building of this “legally installed” steel bridge, a wooden bridge of questionable legitimacy did its job, while growing rickety, for 17 years. That long crisscross framework of timber trusses was called the Outlaw Bridge, the celebrated original link between Ontario and Minnesota.
The Outlaw Bridge is the true reason for this story – a brief telling about a colorful piece of history.
In the early years of the 20th century, Minnesota had enough logging and fishing action on the North Shore for the state and Cook County to carve out a passable road from Grand Marais to the border by 1916. In Ontario, a narrow primitive trail snaked south from Fort William and Port Arthur (today’s Thunder Bay) toward the border, and the province had started improving it in 1913. It became known as the Scott Highway, named for William Scott, a lumberman who logged much of the area’s timber and who was a leading advocate of a bridge to Minnesota.
Our nations each had a road to nowhere, ending abruptly at the river. If you wanted to visit across the border, you had to find water transportation, anything from a canoe to a freight or passenger steamer.
Settlers on both sides of the border wanted a bridge, realizing how it would serve and develop commerce. But bureaucratic stalemates and tedious deliberation in Ottawa and Washington are nothing new. U.S. and Canadian cooperation to plan and fund a bridge proved to be a time-consuming process in 1916, as many claim it is today. Sometimes, though, citizens find their own way.
The Rotary Club, founded in Chicago in 1905, was an energetic, fast-growing business network devoted to professional development and community service.
The Outlaw Bridge
By 1916 Rotary had spread widely in the United States and was gaining popularity in Canada. Businesses in Fort William and Port Arthur were forming a chapter, prompted by the Rotary Club of Duluth.
Impatient members of both clubs decried the bridgeless roadway and were frustrated in their attempts to get government appropriations for the missing link. To the zealous Rotarians, the solution seemed obvious. The quickest way to get a bridge was to build it themselves.
In the fall of 1916, both the U.S. and Canadian clubs unanimously endorsed the plot. A Twin Cities Rotary member, D.B. Fegles, who operated an engineering and construction company, donated the design. The first contribution, $1,500, came from the Duluth Rotary, then the new Port Arthur-Fort William chapter; the Minneapolis-St. Paul club and Minnesota’s Cook County each sweetened the pot with $2,000.
During the winter of 1916-17, lumberman William Scott hauled the many required loads of truss timbers, decking and hardware to the river’s edge. Construction began in early spring, and the Outlaw Bridge was completed by the end of June.
The unofficial bridge was officially dedicated with considerable pomp on August 18. The celebration took place at the Cook County Courthouse in Grand Marais, where enough lodging for 150 guests turned up when private homes supplemented the town’s hotel capacity. The Duluth and Lakehead delegations of Rotarians, state and provincial officials and politicians converged at 2 p.m. Most accounts estimate a crowd of 500. The caravan from Canada included a support truck with a mechanic and assortment of tires.
George Howard Ferguson, minister of the Ontario Department of Mines, Forests and Highways, and later premier of Ontario, declared the bridge open. Duluth’s new mayor, C.R. Magney, was among the prominent speakers.
No federal representatives were invited, but it took only a few days before both governments hastily set up customs enforcement in tents on each side of the river.
The Outlaw Bridge bred welcome new commercial activity and an abundance of stories in the years that followed. Much of the colorful lore involved attempts to smuggle dutiable or forbidden goods, particularly in the wake of America’s prohibition of alcoholic beverages enacted in 1920. One large boulder on the U.S. side became known as the “crying rock,” sadly used to smash confiscated bottles of illegal booze from Canada. (Prohibition, by the way, was conceived by an abstemious Minnesotan, U.S. representative Andrew Volstead. The National Prohibition Act of 1919 is often called the Volstead Act.)
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The Outlaw Bridge
The bridge was busy shortly after opening.
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The Outlaw Bridge
Once the span was completed, tents serving customs stations quickly sprang up.
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The Outlaw Bridge
Dignitaries after the dedication ceremony, from left: J.E. Whitson, roads commissioner of Northern Ontario; perhaps a Mr. Moore (not on the roster); William Scott, whose Pigeon River Timber Company provided trusses and decking, and G. Howard Ferguson, Ontario minister of Lands and Forests.
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The Outlaw Bridge
The bridge got a new coat of white paint in time for the August 18, 1917, dedication.
While the timbers are long gone, the Outlaw Bridge legend shows no signs of fading away. It was reconstructed again recently in a frisky song on “Where the Rainbow Ends” by Jamie Gerow and Jack Wall of Thunder’s Bay’s popular Flipper Flanagan’s Flat Footed Four. The lyrics are especially fun if you’re acquainted with some of the mentioned places, like Nolalu or the Devon Road. Jamie classifies the Flanagan outfit’s style as Canadian Appalachian Celtic.
Jamie became intrigued by the bridge legends when he discovered a 1919 photo of his grandmother on “an excursion to the boundary,” which included part of a sign crediting the Rotary Clubs. When Jack was a child his uncle was a border guard, and Jack would tag along so he could cross over to buy toys at Minnesota prices. Their song was inspired by the border businesses’ reputation for revelry following Prohibition’s repeal in 1933.
The United States and Canada have a proud tradition of friendly relations. It’s appropriate our countries share this tale of joint insubordination that made a legendary contribution to the harmony only special neighbors can enjoy. Our 1943 Scout trip, on the other hand, was not overly eventful. I had been to Ontario before, at age 9 or 10, with my family in our 1929 Chrysler. We stayed in Chippewa Park, still a tourist destination by Thunder Bay. Later in life, we would own a seasonal home on Cloud Bay and so my wife, Donna, and I would frequently cross between Minnesota and Ontario. Yet that bike trip north still lingers as one of my most worthy journeys north. There was just something satisfying about getting there under your own power. I bet those old-time Rotarians felt the same when the first cars crossed the Outlaw Bridge.
Donn Larson of Duluth is a longtime member of this magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board and a frequent contributor.