Performers capture local history to engage and inspire at Forest History Center

Photo credit: Paul Pluskwik taken from Forest History Center Facebook Page

February 8, 2018 by Blandin Foundation Posted in Grants

Take a step back in time, to a 1900 logging camp in the Northwoods of Minnesota. While there, you can take in the smells of the bunk house where lumberjacks sleep two to a bed, visit the cook shack where men eat piles of flapjacks, wind timbers, sinkers and swamp water, grab your gear in the ink slinger’s office and head out to the cut. Along the way, you’re sure to meet a cast of colorful characters that keep the camp up and running. Just don’t act like a greenhorn (newbie), or you might be subject to a few harmless initiations.

Each year hundreds of visitors’ flock to the Forest History Center to experience this entertaining, immersive world of Logging Camp #1. They meet camp occupants like Knute, the barn boss, Miss Becky, the head cook, or Casey, the bull cook. This unique, live-action historical adventure not only gives visitors a glimpse into the past, it helps them understand the important role forests have played in our past and will play in the future.

The Forest History Center is part of the Minnesota Historical Society’s network of 26 historic sites and museums. It opened its doors in 1978 and has reinvented itself over the years to appeal to a variety of interests. In addition to the living-history tour, guests also frequent the forests for special programming like folk music performances, lumberjack cooking for kids and snowshoe making workshops (offerings listed on their Facebook page).

Various forms of art – performance, painting, crafting, music – are breathing life into, and creating deeper knowledge of, a key industry that has carved an unbreakable link between the past, present and future of our area.

Visit Our Partners map to see the programming Blandin Foundation has sponsored at Forest History Center.