Mike Hanson

According to Slim, when he started to work in the woods the Boss took a chance on him and allowed him to harness and drive the horse teams skidding wood.

It would only be a few still alive who knew Victor Zgaynor, AKA “White Water Slim,” but here are a few excerpts of his adventure.Slim was born in 1908, one of his first memories was when he was 8 years old.

Wrestling, while not attracting the audience that boxing did, was part of the sports scene in early Koochiching; tickets generally cost $1.

Syver Hanson’s son Henry remembers that in the 1930s there were a lot of poor folks.

In April of 1908 a call went out to support a baseball team; 25 responded and it was decided to form a baseball association and sell 100 shares of stock for $5 a share.

Traveling road shows came to Koochiching County as soon as roads made the area accessible, and the population was large enough to fill the local halls for two or three nights.

At the turn of the Twentieth Century the impact of isolation could be easily interrupted and is reflected in how little it took to entertain the pioneers.

Annie Shelland, the first do it all Koochiching School superintendent, recalled a Fourth of July when 30 people showed up at one farm; many had not met until that day.

In the early 1900s, planting crops in Koochiching was fraught with potential adventures, just ask Samuel Plummer.

The anticipated completion of a power plant and paper mill as well as the arrival of the railroad caused inflation to occur naturally, and land prices escalated as well as initial speculation of the rising value per acre.