Ole from Mud Lake

 

  I don't think I'd want to live in a place called Mud Lake even if it was drained. Even if the land was free. But there was a land rush for free land around Mud Lake in northwestern Minnesota back in the early 1900s. Further back around 10,000 BC, the area had been under a sheet of ice a mile thick. As the glacier melted it left a gigantic lake the size of all the Great Lakes combined. Think Black Sea.

  This ancient Lake Agassiz eventually drained, leaving behind lakes such as Lake Winnipeg, Lake of the Woods and little Mud Lake. The area around Mud Lake was  marshy which suited the native peoples just fine. They coexisted with the marshes for thousands of years, but when the Europeans came, fishing and berry picking was not enough; they wanted to farm.

  So giant steam dredges cut ditches through the marshes and drained the area for farmland. The soil was fertile and all was well. The settlers built homes and schools. There were roads and stores and post offices. But then a series of rainy years caused major flooding. In the 1920s the state bought out the settlers and expected them to move on. But there are always a few die hards. The area dried up and life around Mud Lake was good for awhile, till the rains returned in the 1930s and the state said "Everyone out! We're turning this place into a wildlife refuge."

  I learned all this recently from informational placards at the trailhead of the Ole Maakstad Trail in the Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is almost 100 square miles of marshland and reedy lakes that exists for the benefit of migrating waterfowl. The muskrats also like it there. 

  When the glacier melted it dropped mounds of gravel here and there. That's where the trees, mostly aspen, grow, and on one such mound, Ole Maakstad built his shack. Maakstad was a Norwegian immigrant. Though a bachelor, he headed the school board of one of the six schools that existed in the current refuge.

  The foundation of Ole's home can be seen along the short Maakstad Trail. The placard mentioned that Ole's grave is in the Holt Cemetery ten miles to the west. When we visited the cemetery we had trouble finding the grave because the only marker was a ground-level undertaker's plaque that was starting to disappear into the woods.

 On a later trip we brought clippers to tidy up the spot and a Norwegian flag from the Bead Gypsy in Roseau. It's good to have a Scandinavian shop nearby when you want to give a grave some class. 

Ole Maakstad 1870-1961