Isle of Pines Bridge

In earlier times, summer tourists disembarked from the Tower Passenger Station, made their way to the Tower Harbor and boarded passenger steam boats which departed regularly to hotels, resorts and cabins located on islands on Lake Vermilion. One such resort, known as “The Hotel Idlewild” was located on what is now known as Isle of Pines.  A very popular place in the early days of Lake Vermilion, Hotel Idlewild was the setting for dances and parties held there frequently during this time. 

Although the 33-acre island was only a few hundred feet off of Arrowhead Point to the south of the island, there were only rugged trails to the point, trails that had previously been forged by the indigenous people. Hotel Idlewild and its cabins were on the north side of the island and steamboat transportation to that destination was more practical.

Very early settlers, the Gruben family, who had originally settled on land close to Tower, purchased significant land on Pine Island, Arrowhead Point and eventually the island to the north on which Hotel Idlewild was located. The island was called Jack Pine Island but when the Grubens bought the property they renamed it Isle of Pines because there were no jack pine species trees on the island.

With the advent of road construction around Lake Vermilion during the 1920s through the 1960s and the tourist traffic turned to automobiles to get to summer lodges, resorts and cottages on the lake, passenger steam boats on Lake Vermilion were becoming a thing of the past. Isle of Pine’s close proximity to mainland made it a natural for the building of a bridge connecting Arrowhead Point to the island for easy access to the island by automobiles.  

Not long after they purchased Isle of Pines, the Grubens sought permission from St. Louis County to construct a bridge between their two properties. Upon getting permission, in the winter of 1936 the Grubens took advantage of the opportunity to hire a large team of men needing work and the men constructed it with cedar logs, which is why it lasted for so long. These logs were used to form the cribs for the one-lane wooden structure they were to build spanning the narrow gap between Arrowhead Point and Isle of Pines.

Time passed, Hotel Idlewild was torn down in the 1960s and although there were only a few full-time residents on the island at that time, more began to purchase lots and build cabins and year-round homes on the island. By 1983, the picturesque but worn-out bridge was deemed unsafe for travel. St. Louis County took over the bridge and the iconic old Isle of Pines Bridge was replaced with a new, strong concrete two-lane bridge in 1984.