Posts Tagged ‘Echo Lake MN’

Moose Lake, Minnesota

Posted by graywacke on March 10, 2015

First timer? In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-every-three-or-four days blog), I have my computer select a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48). I call this “landing.” I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town I land near. I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is and what the various numbers and abbreviations mean in the first paragraph), please see “About Landing,” (and “Abbreviations” and “Cryptic Numbers”) above.

Landing number 2162; A Landing A Day blog post number 590.

Dan: Today’s landing marks the 50^th straight western / midwestern landing (and an OSer at that). . . MN; 77/60; 2/10; 28; 151.4.

Here we go again. 50 landings in a row that haven’t touched the east! Just like my last bunch of posts, I’ll do the statistics: Each landing, I have a 0.82 chance of a western / midwestern landing. Raise that number to the 50^th power (and then take the inverse) and I get one chance in 20,385 that I would not land in the east for 50 straight landings!!! Phew. . .

Here’s my regional landing map:

My local landing shows that I landed a few miles east of Moose Lake (the town). Note that, strangely, the lake at Moose Lake is Moosehead Lake:

I’ll zoom out a little to show you a broader view. Note the town of Cloquet (at the bend in I-35; more about that later):

My watershed analysis shows that I landed in the watershed of the Portage River (first hit ever!); on to the Moose Horn River (first hit ever!); on to the Kettle River (first hit ever!):

Zooming back, you can see that the Kettle discharges to the St. Croix (5^th hit, making it the 156^th river on my list of rivers with 5 or more hits); on to the MM (850^th hit – nice round number):

Here’s my Google Earth (GE) trip:

Here’s a GE Street View shot of the Portage River just before it discharges into Moosehead Lake:

Here’s a very local GE shot (looking east) showing Street View coverage:

And as per usual, here’s the Street View shot looking towards my landing spot.

Funny thing: The Googlemobile driver was heading east on County Road 8, and he just quit (see end of yellow line, above). He (or she) must have turned off the camera and turned around!

So, of course I googled Moose Lake, and of course, I first checked out Wiki, which said something about Moose Lake being devastated by the 1918 Cloquet fire. Wiki has a separate entry for the fire itself:

On October 10, 1918, two men working near a railroad siding northwest of Cloquet saw a passenger train pass by the siding, and soon thereafter discovered a fire burning through grass and piles of wood. The fire could not be contained, and by October 12, fires had spread through northern Minnesota.

Many instances of mass deaths were reported. For example, in Moose Lake, an Associated Press Correspondent reported seeing seventy-five bodies piled in a burned building. On a road leading out of Moose Lake, “100 bodies were strewn here and there”, according to The New York Times. A relief worker reported that there were thirty bodies piled in a heap in a cellar between Moose Lake and Kettle River.

The fire left much of western Carlton County devastated, mostly affecting Moose Lake, Cloquet, and Kettle River. It was the worst natural disaster in Minnesota history in terms of the number of lives lost. In total, 453 lives were lost and 52,000 people were injured or displaced, 38 communities were destroyed, 250,000 acres (about 400 square miles) were burned.

Wow. It’s hard to imagine something like this happening today. I suspect that people simply could not outrun the fire. Cars were fairly scarce, and roads were mostly dirt. There’s no way a horse & buggy could be a safe way out, and most people didn’t have telephones.

Of course, I had to find a map. Here’s one from Ookaboo (your source for free on-line photos):

You can see Moose Lake just above and to the left of the word “MINNESOTA.” A word to my more gullible readers: where it says “You Are Here,” you’re really not.

And here are some pictures (all of Moose Lake & immediate vicinity), starting with one of those cars that didn’t make it out: