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.
September 14, 2025
In 1978, Marshall Wiskow had a little booklet printed, which he called “The Steam Whistle”. It was sold as a souvenir at the Northland Steam Threshing Bee. Marshall passed away July 26, 1979. His widow, Viona, submitted a story from that booklet for publication in the Heritage Book, published by Roseau County Historical Society in 1992. I’ll read that story today.
The Northland Steam Threshing Bee became a reality on October 17, 1965. The idea began around 1897. I was then about four years old and became fascinated with the steam engine. It has had a big place in my heart ever since. For hours I would sit in or on the tool box and watch it run. While living near Chandler, Minnesota, in 1895, my father, Fred Wiskow, bought his first steamer. It was called the “Giant”. 14-horsepower engines at that time were more crudely made than now. In 1904, when we moved to Roseau County, we sold this engine. In 1906 my dad and two neighbors, Joe Marsh and Ed Vacura, bought a 20-horsepower steam threshing outfit. Both engine and separator were built by Case. Dad was the engineer, Ed the separator man, and Joe the tank man. Later Ed and Joe sold their shares to Rasmus and Peter Lorenson. In 1911 I became the steam engineer and tried hard to be as good as Dad. But in a short while Dad sold his share to the Lorensons.
Later that fall we bought another threshing outfit, a new 30-60 Rumley separator and a used 26-horsepower “Advanced” compound straw burner. We started threshing in August and the fireman worked a little more than 100 days that year. Jobs were small, usually from half a day to a day and a half. We used this outfit for five years. In 1916 we sold the engine and bought a 75-horsepower replacement.
In 1915 I bought a portable sawmill which we moved from job to job. We powered the mill with steam. We used it every year up to the present. In 1930 we quit the steamer and a gas tractor took over. The steam engine then was idle until 1965 when my grandchildren persuaded me to overhaul and re-flue it. I managed to get flues from a locomotive in International Falls and the rebuilding began.
That fall my sons pulled out the old Minnesota binder and cut and shocked a couple loads of oats bundles. On Sunday, October 17, 1965, we fired up the steamer and threshed all afternoon. Many friends and relatives came to see the show. Later we heard people say, “If I had known about it, I would’ve been there to see the steamer run.”
The next fall we advertised another get-together for September 18, 1966. Our neighbors joined in. they brought their antique machinery and household articles and so began the Northland Threshing Bee.
The Case steamer, around which the threshing bee is built, was first bought by the Running brothers of Strathcona in 1910. In 1916, Wiskow and Sons bought it from them. In 1923, when I took over the farm, it became my possession. We used the engine for road work, clearing land, threshing, and to power the sawmill.
While threshing, we were often stuck with this 12-ton machine. There were many sloughs to cross, and roads were poor with many unsafe bridges. We also got stuck where sand was loose and deep. Then we would have to get posts and timbers under the wheels for support and traction. Once, when crossing a rather deep ditch in the Thief Lake area, we were halfway across when the bridge broke. Brother Dewey was driving and I hollered at him to open it up. Then the wheels caught in a bridge timber and that got us out. We were scared, for had it landed in the bottom of the ditch, it would have been serious.
We threshed at neighbors for miles around and because there was so much stack threshing in those early years, we ran until late fall.
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.