Ed Bearss in Dreamland: Dennison, Ohio in the Summer

On June 25, 2011, Stamp Guys Mike, Jamie and Brian got their Saturday chores done early, and met in the early afternoon for a trip from Columbus to Dennison, Ohio (in the Tuscarawas River valley, and not to Denison University in Granville, Ohio) to hear the great Ed Bearss, who was scheduled to speak at 6:00 pm in Dennison on "The Hero of Little Round Top." Tim, Pete and Dave had all attempted to line things up to go, but Pete (who had to work on Saturday) had decided to go on the next day (Sunday) to hear Ed give a different talk. Dave had gotten confused between Denison and Dennison, and had not allocated enough time to get his chores finished at home, so had to beg off. Tim and gone back & forth, and had eventually told me he couldn't go.  And then, when we were about 45 minutes outside of Columbus, Tim sent a text to Mike telling Mike that Tim had decided to go, and was coming with his friend Becky (who none of the rest of the Stamp Guys had met).

I drove my Lincoln MKX east on Route 70 and then north on Route 77, until getting off near Port Washington and travelling northeast up the river valley.  I had been through this area in 2010 when Tim, Pete and I visited Gnadehutten and Uhrichsville (see Stamp Guys Blog entry entitled September 12 Trip to Eastern Ohio: LST, Custer and Massacres dated November 21, 2010), and I was even more impressed by its beauty this time.  The lush valley was filled with tidy little villages like Port Washington, prosperous farms, nice bridges and the sparkling waters of the Tuscarawas (pronounced "Tusk-A-Roar-Us). As we drove past Gnadehutten, I told the guys we would stop on the way back.

We arrived at Dennison, Ohio at about 5:00 pm, with very meagre directions on where to go. However, as we drove down a main feeder street, we couldn't help but be impressed by the clean & neat nature of the small town, with streets bearing names such as "Lincoln" and "Grant" and "Sherman." We guessed right on a turn, and ended up in the downtown area, and found the address for the speech, which turned out to be a Presbyterian Church. Since we were early, we found a parking lot and then began to look around.

The entire downtown are had been turned into a street carnival, with Italian sausage vendors, a beer tent and an area set aside for shows by the local talent.  In addition, we noticed that there were sandbags stacked up on the corners to make them look like machine gun nests.  And there was a flat railroad boxcar on a rail line that had a German MG42 machine gun set up on it, with camouflage and the like.  There were also a number of young men walking around in WWII uniforms: Afrika Korps troopers, American GI's and Russian soldiers, among the others. We went up to a tent that contained informational brochures and found out that the festival being held was called "Return to Dreamland" and that it was meant to commemorate the WWII heritage of Dennison, Ohio. 


The Beer Tent. I texted this photo to Pete to make him envious.

Dennison was a railroad town on the Pennsylvania railroad line where there was a large yard to work on trains. There were two full roundhouses, and many shops and similar structures. Over 3000 people worked on the railroad in Dennison in the 1940's!! During WWII, approximately 70% of U.S. servicemen travelled through Dennison at some point.  During the War, the good folk of Dennison decided to aid the war effort by making sure that every service member received a free cup of coffee, a free donut and a kiss from a girl.  Because of the huge number of trains coming through the small town at all hours, this promise took an enormous logistical effort from the local populace.

After we read the brochure, we got a text from Tim telling us that he & Becky would be pulling into Dennison soon.  I called Tim and told him what was going on, and we all agreed to look around after the talk by Ed Bearss. Brian, Mike and I then headed over to the Church and got some front row seats as we waited for Tim and Becky to arrive.   Some other folks began filtering into the Church, but Tim and Becky got there in plenty of time to squeeze into the front row, center pew with us.  We exchanged greetings, but then Ed Bearss emerged  and mounted the dais on the alter, and we quieted down to hear the famous tones from this gifted speaker's mouth.


Ed Bearss enters a trance-like state as he expounds upon the deeds of the federal soldiery at Little Round Top.

I had heard Ed talk to our Central Ohio Civil War Roundtable on two separate occasions, and of course I had heard him on TV and on the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War.  Ed turned 88 the day after we saw him, but he has lost very little of his keen wit, famous recall and penetrating insights.  [In fact, Becky returned  the following day and brought Ed a cake!  See below] I will not recount his speech in detail: suffice it to say that he pointed out that there are many heroes of Little Round Top, and that Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain played an honorable role in the defense of that rocky hill, but that no one should discount the contributions of Strong Vincent, James "Crazy" Rice, Paddy O'Rourke, George Sykes (who did NOT live up to his nickname of "Tardy George" on July 2, 1863) and G.K. Warren (ably aided by his All Star staff of Ranald "Bad Hand" McKenzie, Washington Roebling and Chauncey Reese).

After the speech, Ed took some Q&A from the crowd (I asked him to describe how he acquired Pea Ridge for the NPS, and he told us a very funny story of going around with a bigwig who fell down all the time), and then Ed signed books. Brian and Mike had brought a couple of the volumes they owned for Ed to sign, and I bought his latest work on Vicksburg and Gettysburg (which was the last book he had left from the inventory he brought).  We then chit-chatted with Ed before he graciously excused himself, and we headed out to enjoy the sites of Dreamland.

We went over to the old railroad depot, that now contains a restaurant and a gift shop. As we browsed through the gift shop, we saw signs to a museum, so we followed them out of the depot and onto a platform where a line of railroad cars was parked.  The rear door to the first car indicated it was the entrance to the museum, so we headed in. The parked railroad cars were the museum, which focused on the Dreamland years of Dennison.  You walk through each car and get a different presentation. One car focused on medical services; the next car had all sorts of postcards and soldiers letters mentioning the fine service they received in Dennison. Another car focused on the Civil War heritage of the area; another car featured memorabilia of local sports stars, including Denton True "Cy" Young.  It was really nicely done and we all enjoyed it a lot.  We then headed back into the Depot, where the friendly docents directed us to some other displays where model railroaders had recreated the town and railroad yards of Dennison as they existed in the 1940's.

After shopping in the gift shop (I bought a "Dreamland" pin for my hat), Mike, Brian and I decided to head back to Gnadehutten and then home to Columbus. We all liked Becky a lot, but we wanted to give Tim and her a little space together (a little bit of four Stamp Guys in a WWII festival with Civil War speeches goes a long way), and they decided to stay and have dinner at a cute restaurant on the square. We drove back west and stopped at Gnadehutton, and I showed Brian and Mike the nice monuments to the Massacre and we all walked through the cemetery to see the many burials of soldiers from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War and the Civil War. As the sun began to set, Brian, Mike and I jumped into the Lincoln and tooled back to Columbus on a clear and balmy night.

The Land of Sky Blue Waters: A Trip to Voyageurs National Park

On Friday, July 1, 2011, my wife Liz and I drove from her family's vacation cabin in Side Lake, Minnesota to Voyageurs National Park.  The drive took about 90 minutes, and we traveled through typical northern Minnesota mining towns such as Orr, and past many summer cabins on beautiful lakes (like Pelican Lake).  The landscape of northern Minnesota contains many swamps, lots of lakes, and stands of pine, scrub oak and maple trees.  The morning was foggy as we headed north until we ascended the plateau around Orr, where we rose above the fog cover to see a rolling landscape dropping to the north into distant lakes. 

These lakes are the main features of Voyageurs National Park, where approximately 70% of the park is water. We headed to the Kabetogama Visitors Center on the south shore of Lake Kabetogama, one of the three VC's in the Park. We had a reservation on the cruise across the Lake to the Kettle Falls Hotel, a historic structure owned by the Park Service where we would eat lunch before the return trip to the VC.  The total trip time was projected to be five hours.

We followed the familiar brown signage to the VC, which is right next to a boat launch ramp in a busy vacation village. The VC shares the parking lot with the launch ramp, so you end up parking next to boat trailers and the like.  We arrived about 40 minutes before the cruise was set to leave, so I got my stamp, bought my hat pin and several postcards, and then viewed the remainder of the VC with Liz.  We watched the movie, which described the interesting history of the French-Canadian voyageurs who would load up large canoes full of trade goods in Montreal, and then paddle the canoes (holding up to ten people in each craft) up the St. Lawrence River and then across the Great Lakes, ending up in the Pigeon River and the series of lakes that now constitute the boundary between Minnesota and Canada. The voyageurs would trade their manufactured goods for beaver furs to feed the seemingly insatiable desire of 17th and 18th Century Europeans for beaver hats. 




These pages cover the two sites I saw on this trip: Voyageurs National Park and the Namekagon River unit of the St. Croix National Scenic River in Spooner, Wisconsin.

We then climbed aboard a regular old pontoon boat named The Otter, and met our two NPS guides for the day. The boat was driven by the former county sheriff who had retired and then took this cushy Ranger job, and the main speaker was a young seasonal female Ranger in her second year at the Park.  Liz and I sat in a bench at the back of the boat on the starboard side, and I sometimes had trouble hearing the young guide when she tried to talk over the roar of the Mercury engine. But that was really just a minor inconvenience, because my eyes could take in the totality of the beautiful northern lake scenery without needing to hear anything from anyone.

We motored out of the dock area and headed to a nearby headland that enclosed the bay where the VC is located. We slowly made our way around the point, and were rewarded with a great view of an eagles next in a tree close to the shore, tended by one of the eagle mates.  This would set the precedent for the day, as we were able to observe nests on virtually every island we approached, and often got to see the proprietors (and even their young eaglets at one nest).

An eagle peeks its head out from its nest at the top of the tree.

We then headed out into the open water of the vast Lake K, where we encountered many different groups of birds. We saw the expected gulls and cormorants, but we never expected to see . . . pelicans! Our young ranger guide explained that young male pelicans "summered" for a few weeks at Lake K as they made their annual migration, and we were treated to the site of the awkward-looking-but-graceful-flying creatures as they skimmed over the blue water of the lake, wing tips dripping into the water, in lines of 15 to 20 birds. 

We viewed up close a small island that serves as a rookery for cormorants and gulls.  The island was probably only 30 yards by 20 yards, but it was literally covered by bird guano and by many nests containing young chicks.  The Pontoon was able to get us within 30 feet of the island, so we had great views of the young birds and their parents. The smell was . . . well, you can imagine that.

We then headed east and passed the mouth of the Ash River at Blind Ash Bay and began to make our way through a series of channels between islands with names like Blind Pig, My Island, and Your Island. Our guides told us stories of some of the colorful local inhabitants who settled in this area in the first half of the 20th Century, including a man and a woman who lived monk-like existences on separate islands for many years until they finally broke down and decided that anyone of the opposite sex who was willing to live the way they do must be fine timber for a spouse.  We observed many incredible camping spots on these islands; the Park service allows anyone who makes a reservation to camp on any of these spots, which have fire rings, cleared ground for tents and picnic tables.  You can even bring your own boat, launch it into the lake, and pull up at a likely camp site and pitch your gear, and then go and get the reservation from a VC. 

The Rangers also told us that the Park Service rents house boats that can be docked at a number of designated parking spots around the Lake; we saw about five house boats during our tour. I am not sure I would want to navigate some of those channels with an unfamiliar watercraft as large as a house boat, but I have to admit it would be a fascinating way to tour this splendid Lake.

Our guides also informed us that the beautiful gray rocks making up the islands are the oldest exposed rock on the surface of the Earth. The rocks are the bottom of the Canadian Shield, and they are three BILLION years old. They sport some incredible versions of lichen, which vary in color from the common white, green and gray to brilliant ochre and tangerine shades.  Scientists come from all over the planet to study the lichen of Lake K. 


These are a couple of postcards that I sent from Voyageurs, which my employee Chris has cleverly formatted so you can see them too!

We then entered a very narrow channel for the final run up to the Kettle Falls Hotel.  This area features an interesting geographical anomaly (with apologies to George Clooney). As you travel east, the islands and land on the port (northern) side of the boat are in Minnesota, and the islands and land on the starboard (southern) side are in Canada. When we docked at the Hotel, we were able to stand on U.S. territory and look south into Canada, which doesn't occur very often in the lower 48.

The Kettle Falls area is actually a portage around the falls from Lake K to equally enormous Rainy Lake. The Falls no longer exist because a Gilded Age paper baron built two dams to control the flow of water into Rainy Lake so he could regulate the water flow past his mill in International Falls, Minnesota.  Interestingly, the successor of the paper baron is today's Boise-Cascade Corporation, which still operates the paper mill in International Falls, and which still owns and operates these dams in the National Park.  The actions of the paper baron catalyzed the US and Canada to form a commission to manage the waters along the Minnesota Boundary, and this commission sets the rules for what Boise-Cascade can do, as well as administering fishing rights, licenses, hunting, logging,  law enforcement etc.  The Canadian side of the boundary is privately owned; it is not a Park.

Because the voyageurs, trappers, hunters and loggers had to use the portage at Kettle Falls, men came to work there as hod carriers, creating a fairly substantial settlement by around the year 1900. Of course, where ever you have men settling in the American West you have three other things show up: (1) liquor; (2) gambling and (3) prostitution. The Kettle Falls Hotel was built in 1910 or 1911 (there are no exact records) and supposedly was financed by the local madam (which, you have to admit, makes sense as an investment for her). During Prohibition, the area around the Hotel became a hotbed of smuggling liquor in from Canada. Smugglers who were caught in remote areas by U.S. Revenue Agents would explain their presence by saying that they were looking for a blind pig that they had lost (and thus the name of the aforementioned island). In the Kettle Falls area, the sobriquet "blind pig" was used to identify anyone who made a living by producing or transporting illegal liquor.

We learned all this useful information on a short hike from the boat dock to the Hotel itself.  The Park Service acquired the Hotel in the 1970's and substantially rehabilitated it.  Before the NPS acquired the Hotel, the structure had begun to shift as its rock base moved with seismic activity, creating crazily-tilted floors and earning the Hotel the great nickname "The Tiltin' Hilton."  The only room the NPS left in its original state is the bar (which my wife thinks is hilarious), which contains a floor that pitches at a 40 degree angle, The pool table has a huge wedge under it to keep it flat.  The bar also has an original nickelodeon that our young Ranger engaged in music with a coin.

The hotel has its own stamp (see above), which you get in the gift shop which is next to the restaurant.

We sat down on the veranda of the hotel and ordered lunch.  The Hotel had Grain Belt on tap, and I ordered one. We ate freshly caught fish and some nice sauteed potatoes. Yum!  When lunch was finished, we met up with our Rangers who walked us out to the dams and gave us a tour of these structures.  They explained that the view north into Rainy Lake from the dam is actually the same view that has been recreated on the Hamm's Beer bottle in its famous "From the Land of Sky Blue Waters" advertising campaign. 

A view of the beach of an island that the Park Service has opened to visitors who want to see a restored mining site.

We then climbed aboard The Otter, and began the return trip to the Lake K Visitor's Center.  We took a different route back, and sailed into the bay of an island that used to have a mining operation but has now been rehabilitated and opened as a day camp that boaters can visit and tour. We then toured several other islands containing eagles nests, and returned to the VC at about 4:30 pm.

Liz and I hustled out to the car and raced over to the Ash River area to try to get to the VC there before it closed at 5:00 pm.  Despite the fact that we arrived in the parking lot at about 4:55 pm, the flag was down and the VC door was locked when we reached the VC.  It was a little frustrating, but I knew all along we would be cutting it close.  On the road into the VC, we had seen signs for the Beaver Pond Overlook Trail, so we decided to give it a shot since we weren't going to be able to see the VC.  We parked in a deserted parking area along the road, and found some signage for the trail at the north end of the small parking area.  There is a restroom just inside the wood line which we took advantage of, and then we proceeded to follow a well-tended path through the woods that gradually ascended for about one-quarter mile. At that point, the trail led up a large rock and the climb was steep for the next 100 yards, where we then came out on a shelf of the rock that overlooked a large meadow that contained two large ponds created by beaver dams.  A wayside explained that the dams actually helped enlarge the meadow by creating the ponds that killed off the trees.  As we watched from our perch high above the ponds, we saw two beavers begin to swim around in the ponds. Of course, there were numerous wading birds in and around the ponds.  It was a really cool site and we both liked it a lot.

We then drove down the road and saw signage for a Forest Overlook. We got out of the car and started down the path, which was very overgrown.  Soon, it became very difficult to discern where the path went.  My wife is a Minnesota native and her "bear radar" was pinging loudly, so I reluctantly agreed to give up the quest.  We hopped back into my car, and drove back toward Side Lake, stopping at the Viking Bar in Bear River, Minnesota for the Friday night fish fry before getting back to the cabin.