Following a 2018 decision by the Oberholtzer Board of Directors, an old building fondly called the “LP” (for Low Profile) will be completely removed in the next year from its perch near the south shore of Rainy Lake’s Gull Island.  Huge progress toward that goal was made this month by Facilities Management Chair, Michael Reid, and an intrepid crew of two others: Craig Fernholz and Doug Kelley, all three men of St. Paul MN.  See photos of the building-down-flat and the three workers seated on a bench inside a traditional lodge.

Here is a brief history of Gull Island and this structure.  It takes off from the ownership of William Hapgood in mid-Twentieth Century.  A fire took an old cabin of Hapgood’s, and he notified Ernest Oberholtzer that he would like a replacement cabin by June of that year (we assume early 1950s).  Ober was a busy man, and he solicited help from the local community but accepted the compromise of a re-purposed Wanigan in the style of our current kitchen boat.  When Hapgood returned to see the placement and the makeshift structure, he rejected it, and his family apparently never used it at all.

Meanwhile and some decades later, Gull Island and its structures were purchased by Rosalie Heffelfinger Hall and her husband, Ted Hall, of Rainy Lake Chronicle fame.  They enjoyed the small structure as a guest house while they mainly inhabited the floating houseboat that they and Rainy Lakers called “The Frigate.”  The LP went into disrepair after the death of Ted Hall, and the entire island and any structures came into the ownership of the Ernest Oberholtzer Foundation, at the bequest of the Halls or the donation of Thomas Hall.

We are now happy to open up the airspace near a lovely sandy cove, and to enjoy the island without this old structure. No specific plans have been made about further development of Gull Island; we appreciate its natural beauty.  Meanwhile, more work will be done this year to clear the area, and eventually that site will come back to nature, complete with a lovely spine of rock that once flowed under the stilted structure.

Enormous thanks to the workers for facing the cold of the North and for managing to get us this far with this project.