Tupperware Parties, Hot Tubs : Civilization Slow to Reach Northwest Angle of Minn.

If not for a map-making error two centuries ago, this 150-square-mile tract of bogs and woods would not even be part of the United States.

Jutting 30 miles into Canada, the Northwest Angle is the northernmost point in the lower 48 states, a remote chunk of Minnesota that, until just 15 years ago, could only be reached by boat or ski plane.

However there are signs that civilization is finally coming to the Angle.

Now, a gravel road winds through the forest and a power line brings electricity to the 60 people living here on the shore of the vast Lake of the Woods. Unleaded gas still is not available, but there are Tupperware parties. And one resort recently converted its minnow tanks into a hot tub.

Changing Wilderness

“It still has the allure for the city people of a wilderness,” said Don McClanathan, who owns and operates the Bonnie Brae Resort on Oak Island. “However, for those who know what a wilderness is, it’s changed.”

It is home to Minnesota’s only one-room public school, the Angle Inlet School. Eleven students from kindergarten through the eighth grade attend, with some riding boats or three-wheel, all-terrain vehicles to class.

“It’s something out of the past. It’s something most people can’t experience,” said the teacher, Linda Bernhardson, 26, who moved to the Angle this year after teaching at Warroad, 40 miles to the southwest, for four years.

Fewer than half a dozen people own radio telephones, which cost about $1,000 a year to maintain. Most talk to their neighbors over marine band or citizens band radio.

No Sophisticates

“You can’t be a big-city person, a sophisticated type” to live here, said Diane Edman, a mother of three children who runs the Angle Outpost resort with her husband, Paul.

“We had a lady staying with us who said while her husband was fishing, she’d go to the shopping center. Well, we don’t have a shopping center.”

The nearest filling station is in Sprague, Manitoba, 41 miles away. The nearest movie theater is in Roseau, 80 miles away. There are no highways or fast-food restaurants.

Instead, there is the Northwest Angle State Forest, which is full of deer, moose, black bear, timber wolf and grouse. Loons, the state bird, bob on the lake, while bald eagles and geese fly overhead.

Quiet Life

“I just like the quiet living,” said Loren Bray, 74, a former Chicago bartender who has lived on Oak Island for 44 years. “I do whatever turns me on. If I feel like going for a boat ride, I go for a boat ride. The world’s cut off from me, but I enjoy it.”

The Northwest Angle was formed because of a misconception of geography. When the Treaty of Paris was negotiated at the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783, the British proposed that the U.S.-Canadian border follow Rainy River to the Lake of the Woods, through the lake to its northwestern-most point, then due west to the Mississippi River.

However, the Mississippi River does not lie west of Lake of the Woods. The treaty negotiators had relied on an old map, “Mitchell’s Map of North America,” published in London in 1775. Actually, the river is about 140 miles to the south.

In 1841, the British appointed an astronomer, Dr. I. L. Tiarks, to study the problem. He took a map of Lake of the Woods, placed a ruler across the lake in a northeast to southwest direction, and then moved the ruler to the left across the map. The last point of shoreline touched by the ruler was established as the northwest point. Tiarks then dropped a line straight south to the 49th parallel, creating the Northwest Angle of the United States.

Tiarks’ decision was accepted by both sides, but the boundary was not surveyed and definitely established until 1925.

“We’re talking about seceding from the union and being our own nation,” joked Harley Jenson, a former resort owner who has lived in the area for 32 years. “Look at all the aid we’d get.”

Indian Wars

The Angle’s first inhabitants were Indians. Chippewa and Sioux Indians warred for control of the area, with the Chippewa pushing the Sioux out.

In the 1730s, Jesuit missionaries and explorers arrived in the area, seeking the fabled Northwest Passage across North America, a waterway to the Pacific Ocean.

Next came fur traders, woodcutters and fishermen. After the pine was cut and the commercial fishermen were bought out by the state, the resort owners were left as the only people making a living in the Angle.

“There aren’t many new people here,” Diane Edman said. “Unless you’re a resort owner or are independently wealthy, there’s nothing to do unless you’re the teacher or the road grader.”

Marie Hawkins, 75, came to Oak Island in 1952. She and her late husband, both teachers from Ohio, were looking for a resort to own. They bought the Oak Island Resort, which is now run by their son, Jack.

“I’m not a person who gets bored,” Mrs. Hawkins said. “I sit at my kitchen window and look at the scenery, and it always changes.”

Talk About the Weather

Weather is the main topic of conversation. People stop talking when the weather report comes over the radio.

In early November comes the “freeze-up,” when ice and snow make travel difficult. The “break-up” comes in early April. Some 40 inches of snow falls each winter, and the temperature drops to 20 or 30 degrees below zero.

“Last winter was a rough one,” said Joyce Newcom, who lives with her husband, Richard, on Oak Island. “It was so cold, so many days. It seemed like getting to the store was a real battle.”

Minneapolis is 425 miles away. Winnipeg, Manitoba, is 125 miles to the northwest. Flying across the lake to Baudette, the county seat of Lake of the Woods County, takes 15 minutes. A boat ride there takes two or three hours, and rough water makes the trip treacherous. Snowmobiles, a plaything in many places, are a necessity here.

“People tend to be a little more careful” because of the distance, Paul Edman said. “You always let people know where you’re going, and you check in when you get there. In the winter, you throw a sleeping bag in your pickup, in case you get stuck.”