An old Indian legend held that Bearskull Lake was sacred and that any white man involved with the lake or its vicinity would suffer everlasting ill fortune. After a tornado ripped through this area in 1904 and toppled the last great stands of virgin pine, the salvageable timber drew brothers John and David Emerson to the vicinity of Bearskull Lake. Hauling sawmill machinery, supplies, and logging equipment 25 miles through swamps and forest from Park Falls, they established a sawmill town there in 1905. As work to salvage the wind-blown timber began, a fast-moving forest fire destroyed the mill and the new community of Emerson. The next spring the brothers brought in larger, more modern sawmill equipment and rebuilt Emerson. Wood-frame homes for lumberjacks and their families lined both sides of the town’s half-mile-long main street, and Emerson had a school, post office, store, and town hall, but no saloon because the Emersons were pious prohibitionists who did not allow intoxicating liquor in their town. In 1908, lightning struck and killed John and three members of the Emerson family while they were fishing near Bearskull Lake. The family never recovered from the tragedy, and the mill and town were soon abandoned as logging operations moved away from Bearskull Lake.