Longtime resort owner Bruce Kerfoot dies, ‘legend‘ of the Gunflint Trail
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Bruce Kerfoot, who along with his wife Sue ran the historic Gunflint Lodge and Outfitters in far northeastern Minnesota for half a century, has died. He was 85.
In a post on social media, Kerfoot’s family said he died in his sleep Wednesday night.“The family has some peace knowing he and Justine are paddling together to their shore lunch spot,” they wrote.
Kerfoot’s mother Justine, along with his grandmother, ran the resort on the Gunflint Trail beginning in the late 1920s. Bruce and Sue Kerfoot took it over in the 1960s, and operated the iconic resort until they sold it in 2016.
Kerfoot was born at the resort, only leaving to go to college and to serve in the military. “He would always say he was the first white man born on Gunflint Lake,” said Bonnie Schudy, who worked for the Kerfoots at Gunflint Lodge for 15 years.
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Justine Kerfoot became a well known writer, chronicling her life growing up on the edge of the wilderness. She learned how to survive in the north woods during the depression from local Anishinaabe families, Schudy said. And she in turn passed on that knowledge to her son, Bruce.
Kerfoot was a “legend,” said Linda Jurek, who directs Visit Cook County and the Cook County Chamber of Commerce — two organizations that Kerfoot helped create.
“He created an experience and a destination like none other on the Gunflint Trail. Gunflint Lodge has long been the anchor of hospitality on the Gunflint Trail, the gateway to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness,” Jurek said.
The lodge’s setting, overlooking Gunflint Lake along the Canadian border, is magical, said Kjersti Vick, marketing director with Visit Cook County.
“You feel the history and legacy of the people that were here before, and why they chose to build a life there, and why people travel so far to come up here,” said Vick.
Always on the go
Kerfoot was an innovative entrepreneur, according to those who knew and worked with him. He was one of the first resort operators to bring in international workers, in the 1970s, Jurek said. Now those seasonal workers are critical to running lodges and resorts around the state.
He winterized the resort in the 1990s and began welcoming cross country skiers. In 2012 he added a zip line.
During low occupancy months in November and April, Kerfoot invited guests to stay for nearly free, recalled Scott Harrison, former owner of Lutsen Resort, who met Kerfoot shortly after he bought the lodge in 1988.
“But then he worked them when they came up there,” said Harrison. “That’s something the rest of us never caught on to. And he had really good occupancy in those months. He didn’t have the revenues, but boy, he got a lot of projects done.”
Kerfoot was always on the go, always getting something done, his friends recall. He played an instrumental role in securing state funding for the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center at the end of the Gunflint Trail.
“He had lots of contacts, he knew lots of people. And he really did a lot to get it done. He was just always there, always available to help,” recalled Jim Boyd, former head of the Cook County Chamber of Commerce.
He could be a curmudgeon, Boyd allowed. If he thought you were wrong about something, he’d let you know about it.
But he was also “a very generous, very caring man, who would do anything for you if you asked him,” said Schudy, who now works as campus director of the Chik-Wauk Museum.
The Kerfoots sold the lodge in 2016. But they returned to the Gunflint Trail every summer. This past year, Schudy said, Kerfoot helped rebuild a 50-foot long boardwalk at the museum, as part of a group of volunteers he dubbed the “Sawdust Seniors.”
Kerfoot also stopped in to check on John and Mindy Fredrikson, who bought the lodge from the Kerfoots in 2016.
Shortly after the purchase, John Fredrikson said, Kerfoot was at the lodge every day, “sharing his knowledge, working through all the questions Mindy and I had. We have nothing but love and respect for Bruce and Sue.”
Two years ago, the oldest log cabin at the resort, where Justine Kerfoot lived, and where Bruce Kerfoot was born, burned down.
The Fredriksons are building a new lodge in its place to host weddings and other events, that they plan to have open next year, when the resort turns 100 years old.
They saved stones from the destroyed cabin that they have incorporated into the lodge’s new fireplace. And on the mantle, they carved a quote from Justine Kerfoot’s book, “Woman of the Boundary Waters.”
“I don’t know when, but the fact remains that I did fall in love. An infinitesimal speck in the cosmos, I stood on the shore of Gunflint Lake beneath a great white pine — matriarch of a fast vanishing tribe. And I knew I was home. I was twenty-one. The year was 1927.”