A Little History...

Adding Indoor Plumbing

After World War II, Justine and Bill began to feel the pressure to add indoor plumbing at Gunflint Lodge. First they drew a detailed plan for the proposed plumbing. Justine took the plan down to Montgomery Wards. At that time, the store staff took your plans and put together everything needed for the entire project. She lied and told the salesman that her brother was going to do the installation. The arrival of a truck full of plumbing supplies must have been quite a sobering moment.

Bill’s primary responsibility was to build the actual rooms, which were attached to existing cabins. Justine’s job was to do the plumbing installation. Not only did Justine have to learn an entirely new set of skills, but she had to work with materials that were heavy and unwieldy. In those days, water pipes were 1 ½ inch iron pipes. She learned to cut it to length and then thread the ends to attach to elbows and unions. The drain pipes were 3-4 inch cast iron and connected with oakum and hot lead. Because the cabins were not used in the winter, Justine also had to plan a way to drain all these pipes every fall. Finally there were the septic tanks (55-gallon barrels), which had to be dug in by hand and then attached to a newly dug pit for drainage. Native Americans in the area dug most of these holes but Bruce also remembers digging some of them. The entire project was a huge job that was done over several years in the early 1950’s.

Of course, this would not be a Justine project without an added twist. One area where confusion can easily occur is when you are lying on your back looking up at the bottom of a sink to connect the hot and cold water lines. For some reason, Justine had a mental block when she tried to remember which waterline went on which side. As a result, many of her sinks had the hot water on the right and the cold water on the left. Even a few showers had the lines reversed. Guests quickly learned to try both sides before assuming that they did not have hot water. Remodeling over the years has corrected almost all of these novice plumber errors. However, in the kitchen at what used to be the pot-and-pan sink, we still had the hot water on the right and the cold water on the left for many years. Sometimes it is good to remember that Justine thought she was doing great just to get hot and cold running water to a sink. She had waited over two decades to get that far.