Gold Island and the Vermilion Club

By the end of the 1880s, a substantial commerce was being carried on at Tower with its population peeking in 1888 at what some estimates say almost 5,000 residents with 1,500 men employed in the mines. The City’s retail center included numerous grocery stores, confectionaries, bakeries, dairies, blacksmith shops, jewelry stores, livery stables , three photography studios, a brewery, six general stores, two drug stores, three clothing stores and six hotels. By far the most prolific establishment was the saloon with as many as 33 such establishments gracing the main street of Tower at one time. The sale of liquor licenses by the City provided 80% of the municipal revenue in the late 1880’s.

The railroad provided the primary transportation of people and goods to and from Tower and the thriving community provided opportunities for a variety of enterprises to supply and sell their wares to the many local and growing businesses. Many salesmen traveled to Tower with samples of their wares they vended, stayed over for a night or two in one of the hotels, and called on their customers or prospects during the day and socialized with these same businessmen – most likely at some of the saloons – at night. Friendships among this diverse group of folks obviously developed and during the winter of 1889-1890 someone within this group came up with the idea of spending a summer’s day on Lake Vermilion and as it was discussed, this group of local merchants and traveling salesmen made a firm commitment to one another to spend the day on the lake in the summer of 1890

It’s hard to determine who the chief proponents of this outing were. This was not necessarily a homogeneous group but rather a mixture of strong-willed men, most of whom had carved out a living from the early days of the mining and lumbering industries. Tower businessman Max Shapiro had recently opened a butcher shop in Tower because he had seen a man shot to death on the main street and thought it was a good town for business. Many of these guys were pioneers in a very real sense whose occupation or business took up most of their time. Thus, leisure was a precious commodity in 1890 when the stores in Tower stayed open until 11pm on Saturday nights. It’s easy to imagine how the idea of an outing on the lake quickly caught on and became the goal to attain in the summer of 1890.

The original guest list consisted of 23 of which ten were traveling salesmen and ten were Tower businessmen and merchants. The other three consisted of a candy merchant from Duluth (whose salesman was one of the ten traveling salesmen), a Winona merchant and a man from Cloquet who previously worked for a Tower business. Among the Tower businessmen was Tom Taylor, a black man who was a barber in Tower and for whom an island on Lake Vermillion is named. Other Tower businessmen included George Shubmehl, Albert Rohrer, and Charlie Opal.

Knowing all of the steamship operators on the Lake, they determined that Dan Ackley’s Oddfellow would be the best suited for the purpose and so it was that the Oddfellow was chartered on a Sunday in mid-July 1890. The first outing was a day trip with the Oddfellow departing from the East Two River venturing out only into Pike Bay where the boat anchored and the boys spent the day fishing, visiting, eating, drinking and engaging in the type of horseplay and nonsense that one may expect of 23 strong-willed individuals. In short, they all had a grand time, staying on all day until the evening sky started to get dark.

As the Oddfellow made its way back to the dock down the East Two River, each of the men agreed that having had such a fine time, they would repeat the experience the following year, and within the passing weeks and months, this commitment became a firm resolve as the positive impact of that first trip made such an impression on them, that as time went by, the desire to repeat the experience simply continued to grow. During the early years, the group ventured further up the lake, stopping at various points and finally by the third year, landed upon a site on Gold Island where they have returned without fail every year since.

The story of this social organization, which was founded in 1890 in Tower, Minnesota can be found in the book, The Life and Times of the Vermilion Club.