Chapter 11
Duke's Outboards: A Northwoods Institution
For more than sixty years in the north-central Wisconsin lakes country of Vilas and Oneida counties, if someone had an outboard motor in need of repair, there was no question of where to take it—Duke's Outboards. While the business is now run by Duke's son in a new location, fans of antique outboards can still get a feel for the old shop at Rhinelander's Duke Montgomery Antique Outboard Motor and Boat Museum.
Duke Montgomery's shop was easy to find—you just needed to follow the white directional signs from the main highway to the Wisconsin River just north of Rhinelander—and anyone could tell you that if you brought your outboard to Duke Montgomery it would be fixed, and fixed right.
Vernon “Duke” Montgomery was just nineteen years old and a recent high school graduate when he started his Evinrude dealership and outboard repair business in the midst of the Great Depression in 1934. It had been only five years earlier when Ole Evinrude's family-owned company, Elto (Evinrude Light Twin Outboards), had merged with the original Evinrude company (which Ole had sold in 1914) to eventually form the Outboard Motors Corporation (OMC).1 In spite of poor economic times, Ole Evinrude developed two new outboards in 1934, and sales weren't bad by Depression-era standards.2
Originally located behind his father's café in the old Commercial Hotel in Rhinelander, Duke's business was one of the first Evinrude dealerships in the area, and he sold and repaired outboards for northwoods residents and the thousands of visitors to the area until poor health forced him to retire in 1999.
I recently had the opportunity to visit with Duke and his wife, Dorothy. Though age and poor hearing has made it difficult for Duke to communicate these days, his passion for outboards was communicated by his smile and shining eyes as he quietly told me about the early days.
The original shop was on Brown Street in downtown Rhinelander, Duke said. He smiled as he told me about throwing a small Evinrude over his shoulder and walking up and down Brown Street with it to promote his shop and the Evinrude product. “It was something different,” he said. “I was setting the trap and when people asked about it the trap was sprung.”3
After two years at the Brown Street location, Duke moved the shop to a location north of town on the Wisconsin River's Boom Lake, where he would have water access. It was there that Duke's Outboards became a northwoods institution.
While Duke was gaining a reputation as an expert outboard mechanic, he also had a “day job.”
“Duke worked the graveyard shift at the Rhinelander paper mill,” Dorothy said. “He'd come home from work and immediately begin working on the outboards. He'd work all weekend too. People would come from a fifty-mile radius to bring their motors to Duke, and he put in very long hours to meet the demand.”4
After taking an early retirement from the paper mill in the mid-1970s, Duke began to devote all his time to the outboard business.
Duke was witness to the development of a major American industry.
“In the early years there was no real market for outboards,” Duke said. “Outboards were used only for practical purposes, just by fishermen or duck hunters. The market didn't take off until there was something the public was really looking for.”
According to Duke, this “something” was the development of shrouded, or covered, motors. The two outboard models introduced by Ole Evinrude in 1934—the Imperial versions of the 5.5-horsepower Lightwin and the 9.2-horsepower Lightfour—were the first truly shrouded outboards.5
“This simply made the outboards look nicer,” Duke said. “People liked that.”
In the 1960s Duke expanded his business to include snowmobile sales and repair, taking advantage of the increasing popularity of the sport. However, by the mid-1970s he dropped the snowmobile business, finding they were too much of a headache with frequent breakdowns.6
Through the years Duke worked on just about every type of American outboard made, and few knew an outboard motor as well as Duke did.
After having seen and repaired too many motors to ever count, Duke did mention he had a favorite Evinrude model.
“One of my favorites was the four-cylinder, 5.4-horsepower Zephyr,” Duke said. “This had a nice running engine. It was made between 1940 and 1960.”
After devoting sixty-five years to the outboard motor business, age finally caught up with Duke and forced him to completely retire in 1999. Duke and Dorothy's son, Jim Montgomery, who had learned the outboard business from his father, came back from Alaska (where he had been living for twenty years) to take over the business from Duke. Jim carries on the Duke's Outboards tradition of quality service from a new shop located not far from Duke's original Boom Lake shop. A reminder of Duke's legacy is an incredible collection of antique outboard motors.
From the early days of his shop, Duke began collecting outboards—generally those left for repairs and never picked up. Eventually there came to be more than a hundred outboards in the collection, one of the most diverse antique outboard motor collections in Wisconsin. Jim Montgomery began to display several of his dad's motors—representatives of different makes and models—at his shop, and he also began collecting antique outboards himself.
“People would come into my shop and be just fascinated with the old motors, but there were many more of my dad's outboards in storage. I didn't have space to display all of them,” said Montgomery. “I thought they should be put on display in a museum setting for people to enjoy.”7
As a tribute to Duke and the Wisconsin outboard industry, Jim Montgomery spearheaded an effort to establish the Duke Montgomery Antique Outboard Motor and Boat Museum in Rhinelander. Duke's outboard collection is the core of the museum, which was established in 2005 and is housed in the Pioneer Historical Park along with a logging museum and a railroad museum.
On display are pre-1960 outboard motors as well as historic wooden boats manufactured in Wisconsin, antique fishing equipment, and a recreation of Duke Montgomery's old shop.