Chapter 19

The Summer White House on the Brule

Calvin Coolidge served as president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Coolidge, vice president in Warren G. Harding's administration, initially gained the presidency following Harding's sudden death by stroke in August of 1923. The “Roaring Twenties” were a time of great prosperity as well as great social change in America. A growing fear of communism, prohibition and the organized crime wave it spawned, and the debate over the teaching of evolution in schools signified that the nation was undergoing inexorable change. The president known as “silent Cal” for his minimalist use of words, however, remained as quiet and steady as ever. His daily routine included going to bed early, getting up early, taking a two- or three-hour nap in the afternoon, and perhaps relaxing in a rocking chair on the front porch of the White House with a fine Havana cigar.

His conservative philosophy held that government, including the office of the president, should interfere as little as possible in the lives of its citizens. This policy won him the distinction of also being known as the “passive president.” So it was not out of character for Coolidge to pack up his belongings and temporarily move the “White House,” and thus the center of American politics, to a fishing lodge on the relatively remote Bois Brule River, a few miles south of the small northern Wisconsin town called Brule in Douglas County, for the summer of 1928.

The precedent for a summer White House had already been set by Coolidge the year before when he and his wife, Grace, spent an entire month in the Black Hills of South Dakota, staying at the state game lodge there. It was from the Black Hills that he issued the famous statement, “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.”1 Without the tedium of a campaign to worry about, Coolidge made plans to spend nearly the entire summer on the banks of the Bois Brule River—fishing, relaxing, and sometimes tending to the affairs of the United States.

In the spring of 1928 an announcement was made that Coolidge would be spending the summer at the estate of the late Henry Clay Pierce.2 Pierce, a wealthy financier and oilman from St. Louis, had begun to acquire properties along the upper Brule in the late 1800s, including a lodge building on Cedar Island.³ Through the years, Pierce endeavored to create a vast wilderness preserve for himself, buying up land until he owned 106 forties.⁴ He also enlarged the original Cedar Island lodge and added a dining hall, servants' quarters, and a superintendent's house.⁵ The entire estate was fenced and posted and remained a curious mystery to most residents of Brule and Douglas County.

Although Henry Clay Pierce died in June 1927, the five heirs of his estate offered Cedar Island as a summer headquarters to President Coolidge at the urging of Wisconsin senator Irvine L. Lenroot (Republican from Superior), who owned a summer cottage on the Brule.⁶ It is interesting that Lenroot, a progressive Republican, had lost the vice presidential nomination to Coolidge at the 1920 Republican National Convention in Chicago. Had Lenroot won the nomination, he, rather than Coolidge, would likely have become the thirtieth president of the United States. Coolidge accepted the Pierces' offer willingly, and he arrived at Brule on June 13, 1928. The president was accompanied by no fewer than sixty soldiers, fourteen house servants, ten secret service agents, and about seventy-five reporters.⁷

The arrival of the president of the United States and his entourage was the most exciting event to ever hit rural northwest Wisconsin. For weeks prior to Coolidge's arrival, local and state officials, businessmen, and the general citizenry scrambled to prepare for the president.

The Associated Press reported: “‘Well,’ said the citizens of Brule, all 200 of them, ‘We must dress the place up a bit.’ They cast a reflective eye down the five streets and over the three town pumps.

“But that was two full days after the news had plumped down in their midst that President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge had decided to spend their vacation on the Henry Clay Pierce estate on Brule river. It took Brule that long to get its breath.”⁸

The “dressing up” included “wooden arches of native rough timber” erected over the main road through town for which Brule citizens themselves had to “chip in” because Brule had no local government.⁹ It was well known that silent Cal and his wife were staunch churchgoers, and it was correctly surmised that they would be attending weekly services in Brule. The Congregational Church there received a fresh coat of paint as well as a new roof.10

Looking to take advantage of the surge of activity, opportunists poured into town. “The 200 residents of this village of twenty-six cabins and other structures are riding on the greatest wave of prosperity in the community's history,” reported the Associated Press on June 3. “Since Brule was selected as the place where the President would spend his vacation, rents have skyrocketed 700 per cent. Trading for business sites today was feverish.”¹¹

Outside of town, preparations were made as well, and in a big way. While Coolidge planned to spend most of his time at Cedar Island, he was still president of the United States and had the affairs of the country to manage. As he had the previous summer in South Dakota, Coolidge and his staff chose a high school to serve as the base for his executive office. Superior Central High School (torn down in 2003), about thirty miles by road from Cedar Island, became a hub of activity as the location where Coolidge would conduct business, receive official guests, and communicate with Washington. The school library became Coolidge's personal office. The high school was transformed into a communications nerve center, albeit 1920s style.

Even small settlements in the region saw changes due to the president's visit. According to Albert M. Marshall in his 1954 book Brule Country, “Governor Zimmerman of Wisconsin ordered the roads between Winneboujou, Lake Nebagamon, and Superior given preferential treatment. As a result all the unsurfaced portions were asphalted. The section between Poplar and Brule which swung south to touch the village of Lake Nebagamon and the Winneboujou community had formerly borne an undistinguished alphabetical lettering designation. Now it was proudly called the ‘President Coolidge Memorial Highway.’”¹²

All the hustle and bustle regarding Coolidge's visit was big news, and quiet little places such as Brule and Lake Nebagamon suddenly were thrust into the national spotlight. Locally, however, the most talked about issue focused more on Coolidge and his fishing intentions on the Bois Brule than it did on national politics. As it still is today, fishing was serious business on Wisconsin's most famous of trout waters. Speculation about silent Cal ran through Douglas County like wildfire.

“Recollections of reports from the Black Hills of South Dakota last summer, that Mr. Coolidge went for trout with worms as bait, had aroused serious sporting misapprehensions in all devout anglers here,” reported the press.13 The press reminded folks that the late Henry Clay Pierce reportedly “never allowed anyone ever to set foot on the estate who indulged in anything but fly fishing.”¹⁴

Calvin Coolidge was not known for his outdoor abilities. The only son of a storekeeper from Vermont, his recreational interests included golf and horseback riding. He was known for his business skill, his impeccable honesty, and his devotion to fine cigars but not for his sporting prowess. He did, however, develop a latent interest in fishing.

While vacationing at White Pines Camp on Osgood Lake, the summer estate of wealthy Kansas City publisher Irwin R. Kirkwood, in New York's Adirondack State Park in 1926, Coolidge tried his hand at fishing with secret service chief Colonel Edmund W. Starling. “In the afternoons he tried fishing with Colonel Starling and developed a zest for the sport,” wrote Ishbel Ross in Grace Coolidge and Her Era: The Story of a President's Wife.¹⁵

Coolidge became a trout fishing aficionado of sorts the next year when he and Grace spent part of the summer in the Black Hills. According to Ross, although the region abounded with good trout water, Coolidge was very successful at catching trout due in no small part to Colonel Starling's “arrangements for the streams to be stocked at certain points with game trout, held in check by steel-mesh nets sunk across the stream, with logs concealing them.”¹⁶ After his experience in the Black Hills, Coolidge intended to take full advantage of the incredible fishing opportunities the Brule offered.

There is a certain culture, a time-honored trout fishing culture steeped in tradition, that permeates the Bois Brule River unlike any other fishing culture found in Wisconsin. The guides who work the canoes and find the fish for the visiting sports and wealthy lodge owners—the ones who know every riffle, every rock on the Brule—have always been central to that culture.

The most obvious choice for a guide for President Coolidge was the most veteran and most experienced guide on the river at the time, seventy-seven-year-old French-Indian Antoine Dennis. Dennis, a native of Madeline Island, had spent a lifetime in the woods around the Brule River and Lake Superior. The son of a French fur trader, he had helped early explorers navigate the region, worked as a river driver, and packed the mail by foot as well as by dogsled from Superior to Bayfield.¹⁷ He had been guiding fishermen on the Brule for nearly forty years and had served as a guide for Herbert Hoover several years prior to Coolidge's visit to the Brule. Dennis, however, declined an offer to guide for the president, citing failing eyesight and declining strength.18

“It was to the Indian's home, this forest, that President Coolidge came for his vacation, too late in Dennis' life, however, and the old guide turned to a younger man to take the responsibility,” reported the Associated Press.¹⁹

The younger man recommended as a replacement by Dennis was his son-in-law John LaRock, also of French-Indian descent and also a highly respected, veteran Brule River guide. Coolidge accepted the recommendation and hired LaRock to be his primary guide for the summer.

“John LaRock, the Indian guide who filled most of the President's guiding assignment became overnight the undisputed dean of the rivermen,” wrote Marshall. “His views on the President and on his ability with rod and fly were eagerly sought after.”²⁰

LaRock—confident, stalwart, photogenic, and like Coolidge not one to waste words—was the perfect choice. Photos of the man often referred to simply as “Coolidge's guide” frequented local and state newspapers, and the press closely followed his activities. When LaRock sprained his back while cranking an automobile, the newspapers ran the headline: “Guide Injured, President Tries Trap Shooting.”²¹

In her 1978 reminiscences of time spent on the Brule River as a child and adult, Rebekah Knight Cochran, who knew LaRock and his family, wrote: “John was a famous and outstanding man. Part French and Chippewa. Like Jack Condekon, he never drank and was always immaculate in dress and manners. Many articles have been written about him. One of Nature's noblemen.”²²

LaRock was paid two dollars per day to guide the president, and the two spent a considerable amount of time together on the dark waters of the Brule, although probably most of it in peaceful silence.²³ Coolidge took easily to the almost daily routine of climbing into his favorite Cedar Island canoe, Beaver Dick, with LaRock in the stern and Coolidge's white collie Rob Roy ever present in the center, to ply the Brule's secret trout holes.

Though Coolidge was recognized as a fly-fishing novice, the press corps was always complimentary. Marshall wrote: “Newsmen who covered the Presidential doings contrived to give the impression that the chief executive instead of endangering the reputation of the Brule as a good trout stream was actually turning in a fine performance.”²⁴

From the very first reports of Coolidge's fishing activity, the ever-important worm issue was close at hand. Eager to get some fishing in, Coolidge broke out his fishing pole within hours of his and Grace's arrival at Cedar Island. “Apparently impatient to essay the first fishing of his vacation, the president took out his fishing pole not long after his arrival and tried his luck both in the Brule and at Lake Nebagamon where he was taken in the afternoon,” reported the press.25 It also was reported that he had asked for worms.

Another report of Coolidge's first few fishing excursions noted: “Whether he had any luck or even whether he used a lowly worm instead of the fancy flies Brule trout are accustomed to was not divulged.”²⁶

Several days after the Coolidges' arrival at Cedar Island, reports began to surface seemingly designed to put the worm issue to bed. Perhaps after catching wind of the importance that Coolidge not be perceived as a worm man, White House staff or the press itself rescued Coolidge's reputation as a bait fisherman with firm reports that the president was not using worms to catch trout on the Brule.

“Brule tradition has been upheld by President Coolidge who has foresworn his customary fish bait by disdaining worms and using flies during his angling expeditions from the summer White House,” reported the Duluth press on June 22.²⁷

Another report stated: “The fishing community of Douglas County—and this comprises about three-fourths of the men, women and children within its borders—heave a great sigh of relief today to discover that President Coolidge has maintained inviolate the immemorial tradition of the Brule River of never having any of its trout caught except by dry fly fishing.”²⁸

However, one press report, claiming to have settled the issue, muddied the waters by contradicting the other reports: “John LaRock, President Coolidge's Indian guide, says that the chief executive is a good fisherman and ‘can catch fish too.’ He also declared yesterday that the president uses both worms and dry flies, settling definitely the troubling question as to what bait the president uses.”²⁹

Coolidge clearly reveled in fishing the Brule, and he did so as often as possible. Concern was raised that he was ignoring his duties, infrequently venturing to his office in Superior. He also seemed to be paying little attention to the world of politics as if retiring from the political scene.

“Paddling a canoe up the Brule river is more interesting to President Coolidge than the Democratic national convention which opened at Houston today,” reported the Duluth Herald after Coolidge mostly ignored the event. “Attention to business routine and recreation are again on the schedule today, with the president more anxious to master the paddling of a canoe against the Brule rapids than in learning what is going on at the Democratic convention. John LaRock, the chief executive's Indian guide, has been teaching him how to keep the craft on its course and he is confident that his pupil will master the art before very long.”30

As the summer on the Brule came to a close in early September, Coolidge squeezed in one last Brule River outing.

The press reported, “A last fishing excursion was organized by President Coolidge early today despite the nearness of his departure. John LaRock, his faithful Chippewa Indian guide, who since June has been taking the chief executive on the swift waters of the Brule, was on hand for a last paddle on the stream.”³¹

The president departed northern Wisconsin on September 10 after a brief farewell address in Superior:

The time has come to say goodbye. We came here some weeks ago when summer was just beginning and now that the first touch of the north wind is changing the foliage to crimson and gold we are returning to Washington. We have had a wonderful summer, in large part because of the wonderful hospitality that has been extended to us by all the people of this region. Our house at Cedar Island and the surroundings there have been exceedingly pleasant. It has been an inspiration to attend the Sunday services of the blind preacher at the little church at Brule, who is compensated by the sharpness of his spiritual sight for the lack of physical sight.³²

The newspapers made special note of the following remarks:

I think this is going to be a coming region for those who are seeking recreation. The fishing around here, I can testify, is fine. The climate is wonderful. It has been a great benefit to Mrs. Coolidge and myself, and we are returning to Washington refreshed and invigorated.

There is little doubt that Coolidge was deeply touched by the magic of the Bois Brule River during the summer of 1928, the summer when he learned to fly-fish for trout and paddle a birch bark canoe. Coolidge made no mention of John LaRock in his farewell speech, but the speech didn't contain many specifics anyway, true to Coolidge's spare use of words. According to Rebekah Knight Cochran: “When the Pres. left by private train from Winneboujou, a baggage car was filled with guns and fishing rods he had received as Pres. When his guide, John LaRock, returned to our place that day, we asked him what present he had received from the Pres. as a gift. Nothing but an autographed picture. It was on a shelf in my pantry until the next summer, when I threw it away.”33

Although Coolidge stated he would like to return to Cedar Island, it never was to be. After his term expired Coolidge withdrew from public life. Distressed by the Great Depression, he died in January 1933, a little more than four years after the summer of the White House on the Brule.

Perhaps some foggy recollections of those carefree days spent on the Brule were passing through Coolidge's mind when, on his deathbed, he uttered his last words: “I feel I no longer fit with these times.”