Photograph by Tom Wallace/ALAMY
Dining room at Naniboujou Lodge
Since its inception nearly a century ago, the dining room at Naniboujou Lodge, 15 miles northeast of Grand Marais on Highway 61, stands out thanks to its psychedelic rainbow murals on the ceiling and all four walls. And even though Tim and Nancy Ramey have owned Naniboujou for 43 years, parts of its history remain a bit of a mystery. They know the dining room was painted when the lodge was first built in the late 1920s (it originally opened in 1929 as an exclusive men’s club, with members such as Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, before the stock market crash forced the club to close just a year after it started). And they know French artist Antoine Goufee created the murals, but they have no idea who he was, how he was chosen, or why he chose Cree-inspired designs for the room when the tribe closest to the area was Ojibwe. But the owners do know they have something special in their remote lodge.
“I think that dining room is a miracle,” Tim Ramey says. “It’s never been repainted—the direct sunlight never really hits it—and nobody’s ever said, ‘Let’s whitewash this whole thing; I don’t like it.’”
1939
Year the building became a hotel, after the stock market crash and the Great Depression foiled the original plan for the lodge to be part of a gigantic men’s club.
5
Months the lodge is usually open during the year—from the third weekend in May to the third weekend in October. Owners Tim and Nancy Ramey also host some winter weekends and retreats in the cozy lodge for brave cold-weather travelers.
30 X 80
Size of the dining room, in feet.
1982
Year Naniboujou was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places, citing that it “is significant both for its unique design features and as one of northern Minnesota’s most elaborately conceived recreational developments.”
14
Sets of original French doors in the room.
200
Weight of the fireplace, built from Lake Superior stones, in tons. “I asked one of the guys who built the base once if it was really that much,” Tim Ramey says. “And he said, ‘Oh, every bit of it—because I carried it from the lake!’”
800
Approximate number of feet of Lake Superior shoreline Naniboujou offers. It’s also right on the Brule River and adjacent to Judge C. R. Magney State Park, making it an ideal base camp for outdoor enthusiasts.
