Bringing life to the history of Grantsburg

What Christmas gift do you get for the mother who has everything?

A year ago Olaf Danielson was faced with that dilemma.

“When we drew names I got my mother and I didn’t know what to get her,” said Danielson.

Both Olaf and his mother Sue Segelstrom of Grantsburg enjoy researching and writing stories. So it came to Olaf. “I began gathering background information for a history book on Grantsburg, put it on a CD, and wrapped it up,” he said.

“What is this?” she told her son.

While they’d talked about a lot of projects, they’d never written a book together.

“The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. It was a very creative Christmas gift,” said Sue.

One of the rewards to writing what would become Grantsburg’s newest history book, “Grantsburg, the Golden Years,” was, “Working with my son,” she said.

“Besides that, I really enjoy local history and I learn a lot from all the research I do,” she said.

The project quickly became a “collaborative effort,” between mother and son.

Drivers crossing the bridge on the St. Croix River coming into Grantsburg could never imagine the impact bridges had on the community. Not, that is, until Olaf and Sue penned their distinctive history of the community that gives life to the town, the characters who played a part, and events that made it and nearly broke it.

Segelstrom has penned several previous histories of Grantsburg but felt a new twist was needed. “I had taken the Grantsburg history from its early origins up to about 1907. So then, when we collaborated, we took it from 1920 to 1985,” she said.

In between those years, Grantsburg rose, fell, existed, then rose again. Danielson calls it, “The first true history book” of Grantsburg that digs deep and attempts to find out what made Grantsburg “tick”.

They pick up the story of Grantsburg in 1920 for a very specific reason, said Danielson. “Grantsburg had a really big problem. They were coming off a spurt of big growth with the cutting of big timber that dried up about 1920 and the town fell apart.”

He added, “Trees were all cut, the weather got goofy and harvesting the Crex (Meadows) changed and the railroad wanted to get the heck out of town.”

Then the ’30s happened … the bank failed and, “The town withered.

There was more bad news for Grantsburg. “They had train service, but crappy train service, bad bridges and part of the community burned.

In the 50’s someone woke up and said, hey, we’ve got to kick this town in gear,” relates Danielson.

By 1965, stuff was happening in Grantsburg. Then it took another downturn.

“I always felt, after going to college, I came back to visit and said, what happened, somebody turned out the lights.”

Danielson recalls how “The schoolhouse burned down, Carlyle Sherstad quit the now-famous Syttende Mai 16.2 mile race and Grantsburg again hit the bottom of the hill in 1985.”

Then, they finally they built a bridge.”

That changed everything and Grantsburg again began a road to recovery.

Faces, places, dark moments in history and humor scorch the pages of, “Grantsburg, The Golden Years.”

Maybe the word “scorch” is the right word, since, “Grantsburg has been cursed by fire. That’s the way it is,” says Danielson.

“Many people remember the Ekdall Church fire of 1980 and it was a scary and dangerously large fire, but few remember a fire that occurred 21 years earlier in 1959. It was four times larger and changed the way the state looked at fires. This blaze was the largest fire to ever occur in Burnett County. It was the West Marshland Fire, a disaster that luckily missed causing great harm.”

Chapter 26 called, “Burning it up,” includes a list of notable Grantsburg Area Fires from the Burnett County Courthouse fire in 188 to the Burnett Dairy Coop fire in Alpha in 2020.

“The school fire (Grantsburg High School) of 1983 was not the last fire. It was not the biggest fire, and luckily not the deadliest fire — no one was harmed,” Danielson wrote, and further related, “A family died in the old Falun School fire in 1982 and it was truly tragic.” A fire also destroyed the Branstad School in 1928.

History also provided Olaf and Sue with an opportunity to tell stories about the famous and infamous people who made Grantsburg a colorful community. Some built the town, some tore it down and others, well, they provided a little levity.

For instance, there’s the story of Adolphus P. Nelson, congressman, who died in 1927. The 55-year-old died of a heart attack that was announced in the New York Times that declared, “Adolph P. Nelson dead in Wisconsin.” As a result, he had two firsts. He was the only U. S. Congressman from Grantsburg and the first person living in Grantsburg to be in a New York Times headline.

“We started (the book) in 1920 because I wanted to include Congressman Nelson,” said Danielson.

Unraveling mysteries behind the characters that graced Grantsburg intrigues Danielson. Under the title, “The Fat Lady Sings,” Danielson got caught up in the life of former Opera Singer Olive Fremstad, who wasn’t born here, didn’t live here but is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Grantsburg.

During his research, Danielson discovered several discrepancies in Fremstad’s age. He traced her as far back as Stockholm, Sweden and despite news reports to the contrary, came to the conclusion the date of her birth on her gravestone in Grantsburg is correct. “Her brother’s birthdate is wrong on his grave in Grantsburg but her gravestone is right,” Danielson said. Her gravestone reads, 1868-1951.

Danielson and his mother spent a great deal of time describing the rise and fall and rise again of the banking industry in Grantsburg. Along the way, they write about the life of banker H. A. Anderson, whom Danielson said, “Was important and a great thing (for the community), but he was so conservative and dogmatic in his ideals. They needed somebody young and feisty who wanted to make some money.”

Eventually, Walter Jensen took over as the chief banker in Grantsburg and that’s when things changed. “He had these goofy companies that wanted to come to Grantsburg and he made it happen,” said Danielson.

One of those was the Rolite Company, which created the first pop-up travel trailer that revolutionized the camping industry. The book calls the Rolite chapter, “The trailer dreams were made of.”
The study of the banking industry led Danielson to say there are, “Five guys who should have statutes at Memory Lake Park and Walter (Jensen) should have the largest. In my opinion, (without him), Grantsburg would have fizzled out long before it did.”

Adding to the lighter side of Grantsburg is the story of Arthur Birnstengel, a 44-year-old farmer who solicited the help of a congressman in his search for a new wife.
The congressman did just that and eventually Birnstengel was inundated with letters pouring in from interested and lonely women across the country.

Birnstengel made a list of desirable qualities, read the letters of the applicants, and eventually went back to farming without a wife.

“Here’s this guy looking for a wife. You can’t really make that crap up,” laughed Danielson.

Then there was the story of Grantsburg native Val Gene Johnson, who was a deputy sheriff in Marshall County in northern Minnesota when he claimed he had a run-in with aliens.

What began as a beam of light eventually led to Johnson’s vehicle being damaged, as he described, “by aliens.” Nobody ever proved another conclusion and today the vehicle Johnson was driving is on display in the Settler Square Museum in Warren, MN.

Johnson always stuck to his story of the 1979 encounter with beings from another planet.

Some of the book’s stories came to life only after a lot of digging and a little luck. The story of the McNally brothers, Donald, Jim, and Miles, who built businesses in Grantsburg, including the McNally Brothers Machine Shop, nearly didn’t happen.

“The McNally’s information wouldn’t have happened if Jerry McNally didn’t dig around in his attic,” Danielson said.

Segelstrom said she dedicated this book, “To the brave men and women whose creative ideas, innovative spirit and bold pursuits will not be forgotten. They were members of a remarkable generation whose vision was instrumental in generating Grantsburg’s Golden Years.”

As a result, the book details the lives of people like Carlyle Sherstad, who led in business and community life, as well as nationally famous folks like Dr. Anne Carlsen. Born without arms and legs, Dr. Carlsen went on to become a woman who overcame her physical limitations, got her degrees, and eventually became the principal of a school in Jamestown, ND dedicated to changing American attitudes toward disability.

She received many national awards such as the Rough Rider Award, named for President Theodore Roosevelt, and was even interviewed on TV’s Today show.

Educators E J. Adams and A. T. Nelson get a lot of attention in the book, as do ice cream and chicken lady Laura Chandler Forest of Forestwood Lodge; the Crex Meadows prairie chicken expert Dr. John Toepfer and Drs. Charles Lindberg and Richard Hartzell, who spent their lives building better health in Grantsburg.

There are stories of the train’s influence in the community, the carpets made of grass in the Crex Meadows plus the unusual ways the community came to have electricity and telephone service.

But readers will probably be either caught off guard or forced to remember “the good old days” when they read about some of the community’s interesting little sidelights.

One was the fact a city water tower was smack dab in the middle of the street and folks had to drive around it to get anywhere.

“It was kind of an odd thing. It was always there, then it wasn’t,” said Danielson.

The city landmark found some folks wanting it to stay with others who wanted it gone. Eventually, the city had a referendum and it was taken down.

Also surprising to some was the huge affect ski jumping had on Grantsburg. “Grantsburg did not have just one ski jump, it actually had five jumps, which they liked to call slides,” Danielson wrote.

Among those adding their names to the ski jump chapter were, “The soaring Soderbecks, Bob, Allen, Bill, Carl, and Margie, as well as Tim Dahlberg, who was known as the most accomplished Grantsburg jumper of the sixties.”

“I remember getting out of school and seeing the ski jump towering over the town, near the river,” said Danielson. Yet, we could not find a single photo of the ski lift. I’d have thought someone would have taken a panorama of the City of Grantsburg,” he added.

Readers of “Grantsburg, The Golden Years” likely will find gems in stories about “Bigfoot,” The Russians are (not) Coming,” the final run of the Grantsburg railroad train, “The Bridge to Somewhere,” the robbery of the “First Bank of Grantsburg in 1931,” and a chapter called, “There is gold, copper and maybe even oil in them thar hills.”

About the time Danielson was feeling, “the books probably too long,” his mother Sue said, “We forgot something.”

That “something” turned out to be a chapter on the history of the courthouse in Burnett County, from the time the first one burned down to its establishment in Grantsburg and the eventual moving to Meenon Township near Siren.

“I’ve always been intrigued with the courthouse,” said Segelstrom. She’s glad it was included in the book, indicating there’s no doubt some of Grantsburg’s troubles came from losing the county seat. “I’m sure it had an impact on it,” she added.

“Grantsburg has a very interesting history and has produced some very fine individuals,” Segelstrom added.

But she found two other reasons for enjoying her part in writing the book. First, “It was fun and my son and I spent a lot of days talking to one another about different ideas and different parts of the book.”

And, “I enjoyed doing it for people to read and as a stepping stone for them to begin their own research. Hopefully, I can help in some capacity. I’ve had people say they’ve discovered things about their own relatives from my writings. Sometimes it can help people follow their own ancestry. It’s rewarding to clarify points in their lives.”

As for Danielson, he was not sure how to end the book. “It needed something light because it was getting a little heavy,” he related.

So he dug into his own family history and included a photo of his grandmother and new husband standing with deer on their wedding day and a story about a man who transported margarine in his car during a warm day only to have it melt and create a terrible mess.

Danielson, who has been a physician, avid bird watcher, adventurer, and outdoorsman, is now retired.

So why does he write books? “Life gets boring. You’ve got to find something to do,” he said.

Watch Bob Rombach’s interview with Olaf Danielson