This tiny Minnesota town’s wild legacy: 2 bank robberies, a train derailment, unsolved wildfires

PINEWOOD, Minn. — Eighteen miles northwest of Bemidji, within the backwoods of Buzzle Township, is Pinewood — as soon as an operative logging camp stuffed with lumberjacks and early settlers. All through its historical past, this as soon as vigorous neighborhood has turn out to be a spot of unsolved mysteries, two financial institution robberies, a weird practice derailment and a number of wildfires.

The city was formally settled within the early 1900s, its huge forests turned dwelling to the lumber trade and the Soo Line Railroad introduced settlers and lumberjacks from everywhere in the nation. Because the logging camps grew, Pinewood’s inhabitants grew with it. East Pinewood Faculty was constructed, together with a church, a saloon, a submit workplace and even a movie show. However with time all of those buildings have been deserted, left to rot, destroyed by hearth or torn down for brand spanking new development.

At the moment a big stone construction sits within the brush beside Pinewood’s outdated principal avenue. Cracked and left to crumble, this stone was as soon as a secure contained in the Folks’s State Financial institution, and its story entails a gang of robbers, a lacking bag of cash and a gunfight.

The Folks’s State Financial institution served the residents of Pinewood till its closing within the Thirties. The primary theft that befell in late November 1921 was not profitable. The entrance door was damaged into, and the notorious secure’s lock was damaged, however no cash had been taken. However recountings of the second theft could be informed for years to return.

On Sept. 29, 1922, an explosion rattled the sleeping residents of Pinewood. The secure contained in the Folks’s State Financial institution had been blown to items and the entrance door of the financial institution was blown off its hinges. The entrance web page of that afternoon’s Bemidji Pioneer gave an account of the theft:

“Armed with shotguns loaded with massive dimension shot, a band of no less than 5 financial institution robbers invaded Pinewood early this morning, blew the secure of the Folks’s State financial institution and escaped with about $1,100 in money and a amount of bonds. Efforts on the a part of the folks of the city to halt the theft failed, the robbers continued their work even after being fired upon, and making their getaway in an vehicle, or probably two, which they’d left a few quarter of a mile east of city. After slicing all phone and telegraph wires main out of the city, the bandits started their work on the financial institution between 2:30 and three o’clock, wrecking the secure with three separate expenses, one of many blasts blowing out one facet of the financial institution constructing.”

Al Thompson, a Soo Line agent, was concerned within the gunfight with the bandits. A stray bullet shattered a close-by window and Al’s brother was wounded. Fortunately nobody else was injured that night time.

Years later, in an interview performed by the Works Progress Administration, Carl Clauson, a cashier who was in command of the financial institution on the time, defined the theft in higher element within the Works Progress Administration Mission Journals in 1937.

“The precise quantity of the loss was by no means decided, as there have been a number of bonds and different helpful securities taken in addition to about $30,000 in notes, beside the money readily available,” he recounted. “All the things within the secure was eliminated, however solely a small a part of dynamite had blown the contents of the secure into bits of paper, and it seemed like a rat’s nest.”

The following morning a bag of pennies was discovered between Pinewood and Solway and a few burned checks close to Lake Itasca, the one cash recovered from that night time. The burglars had been by no means discovered, nobody ever got here ahead and nobody was ever charged for the crime.

“It wasn’t the James brothers that robbed the financial institution!” Lois Jenkins says. Jenkins, a researcher for the Beltrami County Historic Society, grew up close to Pinewood.

When the Soo Line Railroad was discontinued in 1963, the tracks that after ran by means of Pinewood had been ripped from the bottom or buried within the earth.

“The trestle west of Pinewood sits on Nelson Dam street. It’s earthen now, they lined the tracks with a timber body within the early Nineteen Fifties,” Jenkins defined. “However there’s a rumor that there was an accident on that trestle a few years in the past. Leon Olson claims that he was there to see it occur.”

Leon Olson, who grew up close to the Pinewood space, claims {that a} practice derailed and fell from the trestle west of the city into the Clearwater River. In accordance with Olson, it was a good distance down, however fortunately nobody was harm within the incident. Olson supplied an image to show that the accident occurred, however the picture is difficult to make out. A file of the accident has but to be discovered.

Wildfires additionally ravaged the realm, typically from causes unknown, taking hundreds of acres of their wake. The latest hearth was in 1973 and it destroyed over 2,700 acres. Some suppose it was began by a dumpster hearth gone dangerous, however nobody is definite. Jenkins tells of one other rumor that the fireplace was began by a gaggle of Bemidji State College college students.

“They known as themselves ‘Rangers.’ A bunch of scholars bought a church on Buzzle street and used it for events within the early Nineteen Seventies,” Jenkins says. “And due to vandalism or misadventures, the church caught hearth and burned. This fireplace may have probably began the Pinewood hearth of 1973. That is all rumour after all, however that may have made an attention-grabbing story.”

At the moment what stays of the city are only some deserted buildings, the rundown saloon, what’s left of the financial institution, the Buzzle City Corridor, and the Pinewood American Legion.

In accordance with Jenkins, the city corridor was once a dance corridor the place all types of occasions had been held. Lumberjacks deserted the realm when the lumber was gone and the logging operations and sawmills had been shut down. And as different cities within the space grew in dimension, many moved from Pinewood to the place there have been extra employment alternatives.

There are possible extra unsolved mysteries in Pinewood, shrouded in thriller, distorted by years of rumors or buried within the soil.

Editor’s Be aware: The Beltrami County Historic Society is partnering with the Pioneer on 

a collection of month-to-month articles highlighting the historical past of the realm.

 For extra details about the Historic Society, go to 

www.beltramihistory.org.