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Sled talks and a sled ride for Dorothy

Supporters mark 30 years since passing of last resident of the Boundary Waters

Keith Vandervort
Posted 2/16/17

ELY – The Dorothy Molter Memorial Foundation recently marked 30 years of the passing of the legendary resident of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

As part of this year’s annual fundraising …

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Sled talks and a sled ride for Dorothy

Supporters mark 30 years since passing of last resident of the Boundary Waters

Posted

ELY – The Dorothy Molter Memorial Foundation recently marked 30 years of the passing of the legendary resident of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

As part of this year’s annual fundraising celebration, a dinner and silent auction, held last Friday at the Grand Ely Lodge, included a special tribute by a couple of her friends who presented “Sled Talks” and reminisced about the good old days when snowmobiles were allowed in the BWCA and Knife Lake to Dorothy’s home on the Isle of Pines.

Some two-dozen supporters gathered at the museum on Saturday to mark the 30th anniversary of the memorial snowmobile ride, held in 1987. Of course, they could not up to Knife Lake; rather they took a two-hour sled ride on the grassy loop trail through the woods and across the lakes around Ely.

Dorothy Molter was a legendary resident of Minnesota’s famed Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). For most of 56 years, she lived alone on the Isle of Pines on Knife Lake, 15 miles from the nearest road.

When Dorothy died in 1986, she was the last remaining non-indigenous year-round inhabitant of the BWCAW and a legend of the North Woods.

After Dorothy’s death, a group of her local friends arranged a memorial snowmobile ride to the Isle of Pines by coordinating with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) for a one-day permit to drive snowmobiles into the BWCAW on Jan. 10, 1987.

Approximately 500 to 1,000 of Dorothy’s family, friends and supporters attended. For those who couldn’t attend, a small memorial service was held at the First Lutheran Church in Ely where a discussion over keeping Dorothy’s memory alive led to the idea of a museum dedicated to her life.

Pam Brunfelt, the president of the Board of Directors of the Dorothy Molter Museum Foundation, said she figured Dorothy would scoff at all the attention paid to her quiet life and legacy. “On the other hand, we all liked being stroked and she might have liked it,” Brunfelt said. “It is really interesting to think about what her response to all this would be. I hope she would be proud of what she means to all of us.”

Museum Executive Director Sarah Guy Levar introduced Peg Rosett as someone who was “near and dear to Dorothy Molter.” Rosett served on the foundation’s Board of Directors until just last year. She worked as a tour guide for nine years and retired just last year at the age of 80.

Rosett began her comments by asking for a show of hands of those who ever snowmobiled in the room of 100-plus supporters. Many hands went up.

“In a typical day of ice fishing, we were up by 5 a.m. and hauled our snowmobiles to Moose Lake, and then traveled the 45 minutes up to Knife Lake to go trout fishing,” Rosett said. “We could have three trout apiece, and John (her husband) would put his fish in a pack sack with the tails up. We had six fins. Some of the other guys may have had more.”

By noon, the fishing party would be at Dorothy’s cabin for coffee and to get warm by the fire. “We would play Uno or Pinochie, often by kerosene lantern, well into the evening.”

Many times when Rosett and her companions would leave in the morning, the weather was beautiful, only to turn cold and windy by the afternoon. “One day we were traveling back from Dorothy’s and met a couple from Babbitt with their young daughter,” she said. “The little girl had pretty pink plastic boots on. She was cold and she was crying. I took off my boots and I gave them to her to wear. I had nice warm socks on so I was perfectly alright.”

John Rosett counted 25 trips in the log book to Dorothy’s one winter. “Somebody would typically, stop by our auto parts shop in Babbitt and tell him that Dorothy needed some supplies, maybe a beef roast or something, and we would be out the door in a moment’s notice heading up to Knife Lake,” she said.

Rosett described the time that the drive chain broke on their snowmobile. “My husband was a mechanic and knew how to fix it. He used a big thick fish hook. And we kept on going. Here comes my brother-in-law the next day and he used that snowmobile the entire next day with that fish hook keeping the drive train together. Boy, did he get hot under the collar when he found out.”

Rosett enjoyed knowing Dorothy from 1967 until she passed away. “I loved that lady,” she said. “Words can’t describe Dorothy Molter. I miss her to this day.”

Mike Banovetz also told a few tall tales of snowmobiling to see Dorothy Molter.

He grew to love the outdoors through Dorothy’s good friend, Bob Cary, and was able to get in and out of trouble by the lessons he learned from Bob while working at his resort for a number of years. “He was a mentor and a friend to me,” he said.

“In the old days, you were lucky to get a day of riding out of your snowmobile after a day of working on them,” he said. “They weren’t too reliable.

Banovaetz and his cousins and buddies would go to Dorothy’s every winter and spend a week or so at her cabin. “We would go up there no matter what,” he said.

“One time we went up there and it was minus 45 degrees. We had a hard time following the one track up there. We finally did get there and Dorothy just said we were nuts. Her thermometer showed minus 50.”

On their way back home they stopped to make a fire and it was so cold the gasoline wouldn’t light. “I put some gas in a bag and stuck it in my jacket to warm up enough to ignite,” Banovetz said. “The wine that we brought along was frozen solid. After a few more close calls including a broken snowmobile, we finally got home by sunrise.”

The Dorothy Molter Museum was established in her honor to preserve her legacy. It features Dorothy’s root beer-making equipment, an extensive collection of personal objects, photographs, documents and memorabilia inside her three cabins: Winter, Point and Cady (or Honeymoon).

Through exhibits, tours and related educational programming, the Dorothy Molter Museum is uniquely positioned to help visitors gain an understanding of how the establishment of the Boundary Waters as a designated federal wilderness is an important part of the area’s past, present, and future.

The museum property is currently comprised of an Interpretive Center/Museum Store, the three original log cabins, Dorothy’s Discovery Trail, a quarter-mile nature trail, and Birds’ Landing at Dorothy’s, a public birding area.

As time goes on, those who knew Dorothy are becoming rarer, therefore the museum continues to evolve its interpretive offerings and exhibits so that it can continue to provide new and relevant ways to share Dorothy’s story with the next generation of Northwoods stewards.

For more information, go to www.rootbeerlady.com.