Finns in Minnesota

Farming the Cutover

the Finns  35 Hibbing, left his widow and three young offspring “in destitute circumstances.” Following fifty-eight hours of entombment in the Commodore mine in 1897, Elias Pekkala vowed never again to work as a miner.“The solitude of that cold chamber was something terrible, and I cannot begin to tell you one-half of the horrors I endured,” recounted Pekkala.“Only those who have had death, long drawn out, staring them in the face,can realize what I suffered.”62 Two years after his 1903 election to the Minnesota House of Representatives, Finnish immigrant John Saari sponsored a bill calling for improved safety measures and accurate counts of mining accidents and deaths. Following its passage, the state mining inspector reported that a record 177 deaths had occurred in Iron Range mines from mid1905 through mid-1907; the seventy-seven Finns represented the largest ethnic group. Despite this carnage, the inspector still maintained the official line—namely, that most deaths were due to the victims’ carelessness or heedlessness . Conditions improved after World War I, but the forty-two deaths (eight of them Finns) caused by the 1924 flooding of the Cuyuna’s Milford mine remains the worst mining accident in Minnesota history. Altogether, more than three hundred Finns perished in Minnesota’s mines from 1884 to 1930, and untold numbers died of minerelated injuries or illnesses.63 Farming the Cutover The dangers of mining,coupled with employment fluctuations , periodic strikes, and the discriminatory attitudes of company officials, led many Finns to flee the range and establish farms in the cutover region—a vast section of northeastern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and upper Michigan that remained in a“cutover”state after its extensive tree cover was removed by loggers. Joining the displaced miners were thousands of other Finns who came 36  people oF minnesota from timber camps,cities,and Finland itself.Between 1884 and 1922,as Finns established themselves in more than fifty rural settlements throughout northeastern Minnesota, many men still worked part time as miners and lumberjacks to supplement their often meager farm income.64 During the early 1870s, small numbers of homesteaders entered two adjacent townships west of Duluth: Midway (St.Louis County) and Thomson (Carlton County).In 1872, Kalle and Eva Kytömäki (Hendrickson) became the first Finns to file a homestead claim in Midway (Fond du Lac until 1898)—described as a place of “backwoods and bears”; sixty Finns lived there by 1880. During the early settlement years the men often walked ten to fifteen miles to Duluth to seek work and secure supplies. While the Kytömäki’s scenic Pine Hill dairy farm became Midway’s most successful agricultural venture, it was converted into a nine-hole golf course in 1928; the family managed the course until 2002,when another owner purchased it.65 Simeon and Katariina Palkki (Palkie) were among the first of several Finns who established Thomson Township homesteads in 1873; just over fifty Finns had settled there by 1880.Thomson’s pioneers developed northeastern Minnesota ’s initial Finnish cooperative venture in 1878 when they constructed a water-powered gristmill along the Midway River that provided flour for rye bread. Esko’s Corner (now Esko) emerged at a Thomson township crossroads in 1890 and soon became one of Minnesota’s best-known Finnish settlements.66 Other Finnish communities eventually sprang up west and southwest of Midway and Thomson. From 1888 to 1894, Finns began developing a farming district in the Carlton County townships of Kalevala, Automba, Moose Lake, Mahtowa, Silver (Kettle River), Lakeview (Wright), and Eagle and Red Clover (Cromwell). The district also expanded westward into several Aitkin County townships: Salo (Lawler), Beaver, Spalding, Rice River (East Lake), the Finns  37 and Clark (Tamarack). One Aitkin County farmer contentedly described his “wonderful home” in 1913, located “far away from the big world, with its ...bloodthirsty factories.” Southwestern St. Louis County—Floodwood , Cedar Valley, Halden, Prairie Lake, and Van Buren townships— began attracting Finns duringthelate 1890s, as did Embarrass Township to the north. Finns attempted to settle Allen Township just northeast of Embarrass , but conditions proved so difficult that its subsistence farms and local government were soon abandoned . The earliest of Itasca County’s Finnish communities emerged at Trout Lake Township before 1900.67 The Finns’southernmost rural cutover community appeared in 1894 when the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad started disposing of its Pine County landholdings, located five miles west of...