These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 10 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
April 12, 2026
I’ll continue reading today from a story written by Sister Elizabeth Delmore that was published years ago in the Roseau Times-Region. She told about her family’s time at Rocky Point as she was growing up. In the next part she talks about the things they did for fun while staying there in the summers.
Since there were no other children around in those first years at Rocky Point, we Delmore children explored the woods and peat bogs for wild flowers and berries. Of peculiar fascination to our young minds was the Arneson family cemetery in the middle of the woods.
There was a slender headstone. The earliest graves were for Bernhard Arneson’s brothers, Conrad and Benjamin, who had drowned while crossing the lake from Warroad in a canoe in 1903. As the years passed, it became harder and harder to find the cemetery as the rail fence surrounding the plot rotted away and vines and weeds overtook the graves.
Another favorite haunt was the Arneson harbor, a quiet rush-filled bay about a half mile or so east of the Point. Several long-abandoned fishing boats were there to jump on or just sit on the rotting timber and watch the long-legged cranes that came to wade along the sandbars. Returning to the Point, we would nose around the old fishery and swing on the weather-beaten rack once used for drying fish nets.
In the 1930s, Fryklund created a park and public access to the lake on lots bordering the Arneson homestead. The park contained a single picnic table, a square concrete fire pit and a double outhouse. My father purchased the lot next to the park and in 1933 the big news in the family was that at long last we were going to have our own cottage. It was built by local carpenters of commercial cedar logs from a nearby sawmill. Cedar shingles decorated each gable end and were painted green for our Irish heritage.
We could have a fireplace only if we children agreed to haul the rocks out of the lake for it. In the front yard my father constructed a walkway out of flat rock that led from the side porch to the edge of the beach. It was flanked with two pillars of flat white rock. It was this construction and a fire screen decorated with a pine tree scene of hammered copper that made me realize how artistic my father was.
Our cottage contained a long front room facing the lake with eight windows in it. A bedroom contained handcrafted double bunks and a double bed. The kitchen had four windows and beneath them was a long table with double end seats and a long side bench. The table seated all nine of us plus room for extras. There was a cozy old-fashioned range. Beside it was a woodbox which had an enamel wash basin and a soap dish on its flat top. An old kitchen cabinet and ice box from our house in Roseau completed the kitchen furnishings. In the back yard stood an outhouse made from commercial logs.
Rocky Point resorters in the mid-1930s were chiefly from Roseau. T. C. Petterson, Carl Dahlquist, Ina Blom, Peter Sjoberg, Helmer Larson, Archie Lee, were some of the early cottage owners there. A
lawyer from Hallock, Harold Bornemann, built a cabin near ours but soon sold it to Mitch Cody, owner of the Nite Hawk Tavern in Roosevelt. He, in turn, sold it to Dr. Richard V. Harris, a long-time Roseau dentist, who remodeled the cabin. Amos H. Fikkan, a Roseau druggist, built a cottage between the Delmore and Harris cottages.
Martin Nelson, Paul Wallin, and P. O. Fryklund worked very hard to get road improvements into Rocky Point. Finally, in the late 1930s, there was electricity available through REA (Rural Electrification Association.) This did away with kerosene lamps, lanterns and ice boxes. New electric refrigerators had recently come on the market. Down went the old log community ice house, which stood in what would be the back yard of the T. C. Petterson cottage.
The cottagers informally met annually to seek improvements and the common good of the resort. A mayor was elected. The only one I can recall by name was Helmer Larson. Soon the local park disappeared and the cottages that appeared on that land were owned by Elmer “Cap” Nelson and the Gavelin-Sjoberg families.
As Rocky Point grew, the child population grew up and shared in swimming and boating outings, popcorn and fudge making and, if we begged hard enough, an occasional Saturday evening at the Nite Hawk Tavern for dancing. We lived through the fish fly seasons, the ever-present mosquitoes and the bouts with poison ivy, bathing the rash in scarlet and purple solutions of potassium permanganate and gentian violet, the treatment for poison ivy at the time.
We read endlessly on cold windy days and on warm ones sunned ourselves on the split rock formation in front of our cottage. Whole evenings were spent sitting out on lawn chairs or the rocks, watching a full moon rise and spatter its light across the water. On cold nights we were awed by displays of northern lights.
My parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on June 15, 1935, at Rocky Point. By today’s estimate, it was hardly a celebration. In the evening we heard a great noise outside. A group of cottagers, armed with spoons and beating on pots and pans, came to celebrate and then entered the cottage for a feast of cake and coffee and much laughter.
We stayed at Rocky Point from early June until late August. Then, one sunny Saturday in mid-October, we came back to Rocky Point to close the cottage for the winter. It was always a sad day despite the gorgeous fall weather as we nailed the windows shut and turned off the water. In my mind’s eye I can see my mom having us all kneel down to thank God for the past good summer and to please bring us back in another year. As we drove away from the lake, I can see myself kneeling on the back seat of the car looking out the rear window for a last glimpse of the lake. Rocky Point and Lake of the Woods was such a special, special place in our lives.
Thank you to 
for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.