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Foggy days make for
great retreats. Mists crawl over the water and shift the brain into other
modes.
This past wet foggy week
KO’d my garden plans; so I dug deep into some books instead. Good thing, ‘cause
one of them, Superior Heartland by C.Fred Rydholm, a loan from seasonal
Batchawana resident, John Walkley, offered up a fortuitous timely tale.
Here’s a rather long story,
so curl up with your cuppa joe. Louis Graveraet Kaufman was born in 1870 in Marquette
Michigan. (And FYI, his grandpa, born and raised on Mackinac Island, was an
interpreter for Henry Schoolcraft.)
Kaufman’s family were into banking and it
wasn’t long before Louis also became a heavy weight in the business world.
Example? He gave financial prestige and know-how into the construction of the
Empire State Building!
But Kaufman also liked
to get his feet wet following fish up Lake Superior streams. In an attempt to marry his love of the bush
with his desire for big business, he and his wife Marie decided to build a
“camp”. Between 1919 and 1923, they hired 400 Scandinavian craftsmen who used
their skills to erect a luxurious and
rustic L-shaped Lake Superior get-away that would over shadow anything that the
uber rich, i.e. the Vanderbilts, Astors, Guggenheims and Rockefellers, were
building in the Adirondack Mountains. Being no strangers to extravagance, Kaufman
and his wife spent five million dollars on their retreat they called Granot Loma.
Today this slate roofed creation is the biggest log cabin in the world.
The Kaufmans chose a gem
of a site, 5,180 acres of Lake Superior shore and woodland, close to Marquette.
A small point faces a shallow, red sandstone shelf and beckons to a nearshore,
small rocky outcrop that the Kaufmans call Daisy Island. Construction of the
lodge included a foundation that withstands the force of November storms and the
crush of winter ice jams. Labourers dug four feet into the sandstone and laid
down reinforced cement to a width of seven feet. Then two storage vaults with
steel doors were built into the concrete. Later, as Prohibition loomed, the
entire contents of a New York liquor store were shipped and stored into these
“wine cellars.” Logs came from Oregon - cut, wrapped in burlap and sent by
train to Michigan.
Then, in 1927, once the
22 architects and the Kaufmans were satisfied with the completions, there was a
grand opening party. Among the celebrants were George Gershwin, Mary Pickford,
Fred Astaire and Cole Porter. It was a Gatsby-esque bush bash in a Lake
Superior castle.
Imagine Downton Abby in
log, or Titanic grandeur sitting safely on shore. Rich carpets, grand pianos
and hand carved furniture. 20 bedrooms, 13 baths and 26 stone fireplaces. The massive
kitchen is big enough for a staff of 25 and an eight car garage can house Rolls
Royce limousines. The main sitting room is 80 feet long, 40 feet wide and 36
feet high. In the center of the ceiling, 50 animal carvings decorate a huge
white pine root chandelier. A 24 foot wide fireplace mantle was once the keel
of the steamship Independence which
went down in the explosion at Sault Michigan in 1853.
However, no amount of
money buys immortality. Louis died in
1942, Marie in 1956. Their daughter Joan took over Granot Loma. Joan’s sixth
marriage was to Jack Martin, caretaker of Granot Loma since 1938. By the time Joan
died in 1973, Jack was ill and needed help with the upkeep. So he hired George
Johnston, who was also the police chief for Marquette.
Hold on reader, I’m
getting to the punch line of this opulent story. A couple more rounds to go.
In 1977 an enthusiastic
young boxer went to Marquette’s Northern Michigan University to put on a
demonstration bout. You’re right - it was Mohammed Ali, heavyweight champion of
the world.
Now Ali needed a
bodyguard on this trip, so who volunteered? Police Chief George Johnston. Over
coffee at the Holiday Inn Johnson and Ali got to talking about log cabins. Ali
was bragging about his in Berrien Springs, a small town in Lower Michigan. But
Johnston upper cut him when he told Ali about Granot Loma. The champ was
knocked out by the place. He had to have it.
Ali had found
inspiration by the shore of Lake Superior. Create a training camp at Granot
Loma. Sportswriters would come and stay. Convert maid’s quarters into rooms for
aspiring boxers. Use the private roads for jogging trails. Float over to Daisy
Island and build a boxing ring for TV commercials.
Ali offered Martin 5,
ten, then 20 million. No, no and no was Martin’s reply. He really didn’t want
to sell the place. Two weeks later Ali made Martin another offer. Ten million
plus 60 acres and Jack could take the rest. Or if he couldn’t buy the place,
Ali was willing to rent it for $5,000 a week.
Martin was tempted but
after talking with others, who were less colour forgiving than Martin, the offer
was nixed. Thus fog shrouded Ali’s Daisy Island dream.
Today Granot Loma is a
575 acre National Historic Site, with a price tag of 14 million. Take time to Google
the site. You can bet on it being entertainment for a rainy day.
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