Kettle River lands spot in documentary

Kettle River is the only small town in Carlton County to be featured on the WDSE documentary, "This Town," to be shown at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 2 on the Duluth station.

Three other northern Minnesota towns - Sandstone, Ball Club and Grand Portage - are included in the documentary, which describes how the towns started and how they are looking to their futures.

Kettle River, like so many other small towns, started when a rail line came through in 1909. A depot was built, and farmers would bring their milk and loggers would bring their logs to the depot to be shipped out.

"The horses that they used to bring their goods to the depot needed feed, so John Michaelson would go on the party line and let people know when a shipment of feed came in," said historian Betty Lehet, one of the people interviewed for the documentary. "He was selling the feed wholesale but the merchants didn't like that. They created the co-op store."

Kettle River was a settlement with a predominately Finnish population. Cooperatives were a way of life, a way of being involved in each of the businesses established in their little town.

"The Finnish people brought the concept of the cooperatives with them," said historian and reporter Dan Reed. "They were social creatures. It was not an 'I win, you lose' type of business."

Lehet supplied a list of 11 cooperatives which set up a telephone system, mercantile, creamery, garage, credit union, liquor store, locker plant, feed store and grain elevator, supplied power, and an oil association that also operated a trucking company and sold automobiles and farm machinery.

"The total volume of all of the co-ops in Kettle River is around a half-million per year," reported Waino Ojakangas in an article called "The Co-ops and Uncle Sam Own This Town" in the Co-op Builder on July 7, 1941.

"Kettle River truly was the most co-op town as any in the region," Reed said. "They helped co-ops start in other areas."

The 1918 fire played a role in changing the area's economy.

"The 1918 fire cleared the land, and the economy shifted to farming," said Reed. "Feed, electricity and fuel oil all came from substations. The farm producers sold milk and cream with high butter fat."

Reed also spoke of high times and low times in Kettle River history.

"There were boom times in the early 1920s, then a major farm depression in the 1930s," he said. "World War II came along and the farmers made a lot of money. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower dropped the milk prices. Farmers could no longer get by with eight, 10 or 15 cows. Soon there were scores of them. As people built the dairy farms, the co-op struggled more and more."

Electricity was needed for the rural area.

"The REA (Rural Electric Association) was established as a New Deal program," Reed said. "We would not have electricity in the rural area if not for (President) Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. If people had to depend on free enterprise for their electricity, it never would have happened. Minnesota Power came in and supplied electricity for the heavily populated areas and on the Iron Range. Rural areas with fewer users were left out.

"As farming died out, a few of the co-ops survived. The REA is now Lake Country Power, and CAP Oil Association is now Federated Cooperative."

CAP stood for the counties served: Carlton, Aitkin and Pine.

The cooperative way of doing business was similar to business in the eastern European countries.

"The co-op cemetery by Kettle River was called the communist cemetery by some," Reed said. "It is so easy to throw labels around. They were called communists but they were just strong co-op people. I know a lot of them. They are our neighbors."

Lehet recalled comments about co-ops from people as she was growing up in Kettle River.

"Some asked me if the people were socialists," she said. "I never heard that word."

Lehet's family was involved in business in Kettle River.

"There weren't just Finnish businesses," she said. "There were also Polish businesses. Grandpa Ronkainen had a garage and a store. My dad and uncle had a garage. They sold it in 1952 and my dad bought the liquor store."

Lehet has compiled five books that include copies of documents and newspaper articles about Kettle River and the surrounding area. They are available from the Moose Lake Area Historical Society as well as the Carlton County Historical Society in Cloquet.

A viewing party will take place Monday at the Tower Tap in Kettle River, with food specials beginning at 4 p.m. The viewing of "This Town" starts at 7 p.m.