Living on the Edge

Along Lake Superior in the early to mid-20th century, area residents often needed multiple occupations to survive, and commercial fishing was one of many risky ways to make ends meet. Eskel, Leo, and Roy Hokenson began operating a dairy farm about two miles south of Little Sand Bay in 1910, but limited success and the death of several animals in the 1920s helped persuade them to diversify. As Florence, Eskel's wife, recalled, farming was not going too well for three families, and after Eskel received a pension as a World War I veteran, she urged that it be used to begin fishing. In the 1930s, the brothers harvested trees from their property, milled the lumber in their sawmill at the farm, and used it to build the TWILITE and their fishery buildings at Little Sand Bay. They then faced Lake Superior's unrelenting power for more than 30 years as commercial fishermen; before they built the TWILITE, they worked their nets from an open pound net boat, and Florence remembered watching them disappear in the waves. In 1959, Red Cliff tribal member Gus Cadotte cleaned fish at Hermie Johnson's Little Sand Bay fishery, where the cost of equipment and the difficulty of obtaining a state commercial fishing license often meant tribal fishermen worked for local commercial fishing companies.

Russell, Wisconsin · United States