Flambeau Trail - Little Finland

Jobs in the iron mines of the Penokee Range! Ample land to homestead!

News of the good life on the Penokee Iron Range brought Finnish immigrants here as early as 1887. By 1900, native born Finns were the largest ethnic group seeking a new life on the Range.

The Finns did not settle around the mining “locations” or in populated communities. They preferred rural areas reminiscent of their old country homeland. Here they could own land, maintain their language and traditions, and create their “new” Finland.

In 1970 this log building was built as a cultural center to preserve the area’s Finnish heritage by the National Finnish American Festival, Inc., descendants of those hardy settlers. The spirit is kept alive by the Festival’s traditional dancers and choral group who perform on traditional Finnish celebration days.

This building features unique Finnish “fish tail” log construction. The timbers were once part of the huge Ashland ore docks. From those docks, the very iron ore the Finnish immigrants toiled to mine from the Penokee Range was loaded into ore boats for eastern steel mills.

Inset: “Bolstered by love, faith, hope, and a general amount of “sisu” (the Finnish character of strength and perseverance), the Finns brought into the waste land their first a one room dwelling, then a sauna, a barn, and a small clearing for hay and potatoes.”