6.11.2023
This is the twenty-fourth Resorts with a History column I have done since I began them in 2017, and the first for this summer. All the resorts featured started early in Itasca County’s tourist industry and are still in business today. Camp Jack The Horse, started in the late 1930s by the Lars Johnson family, is the only resort located on Jack the Horse Lake north of Marcell. Johnsons owned the resort until 1959, and it has stayed in the family of the second owner for sixty-four years!
I have known of Jack the Horse Lake my entire life because the road is the way to my grandparents’ cabin where my siblings, cousins, and I spent carefree summer days. Much later I learned at least one story of how the lake got its name. I was fairly certain it was the only lake in Minnesota by that name, but I was wrong. According to the MN DNR, there are twenty-three lakes with the name Jack in them. Five are in Itasca County. Jack the Horse is flanked by Jack the Horse North and Jack the Horse South. Near Alder is Big Jack Lake, and near Nashwauk is Jack Lake.
1933-1959 Lars & Marion Johnson
Lars Johnson was born in South Dakota in 1890 to parents who had immigrated from Norway. He was working the farm with his stepfather on the western border of Minnesota by the time he was fifteen. It didn’t take him long to decide he wanted to do something different with his life. By the time he was twenty, he had attended business college, had married Elizabeth, a seamstress, and was a storekeeper in North Dakota. A personable man who didn’t mind being on the road, Lars soon began his lengthy career as a traveling salesman for office supply companies. When his wife died, leaving five children, Lars married Miss Marion Fleming, a schoolteacher. It is unknown if his sales territory included Minnesota, or if in his travels he learned of the burgeoning resort industry. At any rate, by 1935 Lars, Marion, and eight had children moved to Marcell.
In 1935, a local newspaper article highlights Jack the Horse Lake by explaining the name and the new resort located on the southeast shore of the lake.
Lake Named When Logger Loses Team ~ 8-9-1935 Itasca County Independent
“One of the most fantastic names given to any lake in Itasca County is regarded as that of ‘Jack-the-Horse,’ near Marcell. It is a beautiful, long and narrow sheet of water, divided into four distinct groups or sections which teem with pike, northerns, crappies, and bluegills. It is a lake generally overlooked by the angler because of its isolated location due to the absence of good roads. Early day loggers cast millions of logs into its water every winter to drive them out in the spring and send them to the lumber mills.
How the lake received its name was related early this week by a visitor at the L.M. Johnson summer camp. ‘It appears,’ said the visitor, ‘that before the lake had received a proper designation a bunch of loggers were crossing the ice with a heavy load when the ice broke and down went the team and several men. The men and one horse were rescued. The owner of the lost horse was a Finn named Jack Humola, short, stout, and powerful – a miniature giant. Lacking one horse to pull his load Jack, himself, stepped into the harness and piloted the logs over the ice and snow to the camp where his exploit was cheered. Thereupon the loggers decided to name the lake in Jack’s honor and Jack-the-horse was the title they selected. The name has stuck ever since.
Mr. Johnson’s is one of the few homes along the lake. He has 35 acres of shoreline. Last year he and his son, Martin, constructed a spacious six-room one-story log cabin. Martin does most of the work alone. It is one of the handsomest and most comfortable homes on the lake and is occupied winter and summer. Martin is a young bachelor, less than two dozen years of age, a most desirable matrimonial prize. Mr. Johnson, pater, is a traveling stationary salesman with headquarters at Fargo. He manages to spend a couple days of each month at the lake.
Six cabins for visitors will be built by the Johnsons this fall and next year they will enter the tourist hotel business.”
Marion Johnson was the one who ran the resort. Lars continued as a traveling salesman and, although the adult children lived in the home, most worked in jobs off the resort premises. In 1940, Richard 11 and Marion 8 helped with outside work and the needs of the fishermen. Alice helped her mother with the garden and the cleaning of the cabins. There were seven, including one which was a converted chicken house!
According to information passed down from the Johnsons to the next owners, the cabins were equipped with two burner hotplates, wood stoves and nearby outhouses. A large woodshed was constructed to store firewood for the cabins and water was secured by a hand pump and carried to the cabins. The pasture had a vegetable garden and cows.
Records in the Itasca County Historical Society (ICHS) archives indicate that in the 1940s the housekeeping cabins at Camp Jack The Horse were $15-$25 a week, that the cabins were fifty feet from the shore, and that there were eight rowboats available to fishermen.
Harold Boege remembers 1955 the summer he worked at Camp Jack The Horse. “One of my friends had told me that working for Mrs. Johnson would be no picnic, but he was wrong.” Boege (now 83 years old) said. “Sure, she had lots of chores for me. I had to do lots of yardwork and gardening. And I painted all the cabins. But she’d come outside every couple of hours and bring me something to eat and drink. I didn’t mind working there at all.”
Lars was 69 years old when the Johnsons sold the resort. They returned to North Dakota, where he died the following year. Marion died in 1983. Both are buried in Ellendale, North Dakota
1959-current Youngdahl – Stadstad – Huot Family
Born near Little Falls, Minnesota, Warren Youngdahl went to live with his brother in San Francisco as a young adult. In 1940, he was employed as a carpenter. Following his tour of duty in WWII, he married Miss Madeline Brandlein. In 1958, Warren, by then a journeyman carpenter, his wife Madeline, and their daughter Linda, moved to Ely, Minnesota where they had purchased a fishing resort with another couple. After two good seasons in Ely, the Youngdahls decided it was the type of business they wanted to have on their own. In 1959 they bought Camp Jack The Horse Resort.
In an interview with Madeline conducted by the ICHS in 2002 she stated, “When we purchased it in 1959 it did not have water to the cabins and had ‘paths to the bath.’ The cabins were heated with wood burning pot-belly stoves and had only two-burner gas plates for cooking.”
The first winter was a challenge as they prepared for May when the fishing season opened. Warren began making improvements to the cabins, one at a time. He enlarged the living space and added indoor bathrooms. The kitchens were modernized with hot running water and stoves (instead of two burner hotplates).
Until all the cabins had hot water, Madeline heated water in a tea kettle on the hot plate to do her cabin cleaning. She was also in charge of the laundry, bookkeeping and reservations. Keeping up with a resort is an ongoing job, and Warren always had a project underway, even though he was also building homes throughout the area.
The resort continued to cater to fishermen and women, some with families and some on their own. “Our goal for our guests,” Madeline had explained, “is to promote the beauty, quiet and relaxing atmosphere we have to offer. Folks come here for their vacation to fish and spend time with family and friends. We let them ‘do their own thing.’”
And the upgrades continued. After the Honeymoon cabin sign had been repeatedly taken and not returned, it was renamed Cedar. A few other cabins were renamed to fit the north woods atmosphere. Youngdahls purchased a cabin from a former resort. They dismantled, moved, and rebuilt it. They also bought a log building which is where guest check-in, socialize on rainy days, and browse the resort merchandise.
“When Warren died in 1995, Linda and Harold Stadstad and their kids took a more active role,” Madeline said. “I like doing reservations and, of course, visiting when guests are here.” Linda and her children Erik and Kristen came from their home in North Dakota every summer to work at the resort. Harold joined them on the weekends. Linda enjoyed seeing families that had been coming for years and helping her mom. There is nothing quite like a family run resort.
In 2000, the Stadstads completed a year-round lake home for themselves on Jack the Horse Lake and continued to manage the resort with Madeline until her death in 2009. About the same time the resort passed into the hands of Linda and Harold, they decided to drop the word “camp,” so the resort name was changed to Jack The Horse Resort. Upgrades have continued over the years adding many conveniences while maintaining the resort’s uniqueness for families that have been coming for generations. There are now eight cabins, each with its own dock, and one which is a new log cabin available year-round. The beach is family friendly, with canoes, kayaks, paddle boards and pedal boats.
The resort is now owned by Kristen and her husband Josh Huot. “I loved that our family moved into Balsam cabin every summer,” Kristen said. “I always thought there was so much to do – swim, fish, kayak, canoe, hike. The possibilities seemed endless. I could be out on the lake, by myself or with friends, and it was so easy and safe. This is a great resort for families, couples and anyone who enjoys the beauty, quiet and adventure of the lake and northwoods.”
Josh and Kristen lived in Montana soon after getting married and continued the tradition of spending their summers at the resort. They served as the on-site managers while Madeline was the owner and again while the Stadstads were owners. Kristen had always dreamed of running the resort someday but didn’t know if all the pieces would fall into place. I guess you could say, Kristen shared with Josh her favorite place on earth and the rest is history.
Kristen and her grandmother Madeline share the same philosophy about managing the resort. “Our guests like that they can do their own thing and we’re available and close by if they need us.”
Behind the check-in counter there is a large framed painting which has a story all its own. Kristen has helped to clean cabins since she was in grade school. “I remember my mom telling me that in Chippewa cabin the kitchen table was homemade, and that the back of the tabletop was an old sign. When Josh and I upgraded that cabin, we put a new table in and took the old one apart. We were thrilled to see it was a sign for the resort, and I wondered if my grandma had painted it.”
Part of the sign had been cut off, but there were enough of the words to know it read Camp Jack-The-Horse Resort. They cleaned it, put it in a frame, and hung it up. They did not know when or who had painted it. Harold Boege solved part of this mystery. He recalled the sign posted at the resort entrance from his employment nearly seventy years ago!
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