Memories & Memorabilia

Carl Christensen's coat, riddled with holes courtesy of Baby Face Nelson

We've come across some of Carl Christensen's memorabilia, including the coat that he wore when he was shot by Baby Face Nelson. Six holes from the bullets are visible in the coat, going through the back and on the undersides of the arms. Their placement suggests (to me, at least) that Carl must have thrown his arms over his head in an attempt to protect himself from the attack. (He also took bullets in the foot and knee, which resulted in his hospitalization and being on crutches for several months. Photos from the original newspaper articles to come!)

Carl Christensen's scrapbook

Carl put together a scrapbook that included newspaper clippings and articles about Dillinger and the shoot-out at Little Bohemia. (We will share some of these treasures in the near future!) After he was shot by Baby Face Nelson, Carl's local fame sky-rocketed, and he was the subject of a number of articles and interviews. Piggy-backing off of this media attention, he made up postcards that showed him holding up the coat he was wearing (pictured in this blog post as well as in its current condition, above). Obviously, Carl knew how to turn a life-threatening situation to his advantage! The story about his survival certainly seems to have enhanced business at his place, as well as being a source of personal pride to him.

an excerpt on the "Mercer, WI" Dillinger Shoot Out

 

Of course, as we all know, the headline is misleading -- because the events actually took place in Manitowish Waters, not Mercer! (Which are not only different towns, but different counties!)

From Life and Exploits of John Dillinger: America's Public Enemy No. 1, R.C. Remington, Publisher (Mt. Morris, IL), 1934.

Carl's Postcard

"Carl Christensen, Victim of Eight Bullets in Dillinger Raid, April 22, 1934"

Our regular readers will remember that Carl, newly elected as town constable, went to investigate the Dillinger shooting at Little Bohemia. Baby-Face Nelson shot him eight times in the back, chest, hip and foot! Here is a postcard where he displays the coat he was wearing, showing the bullet holes.

Carl Christensen & Baby Face Nelson

Like many Northwoods "old-timers," Carl had his own story to tell about the night that the FBI tracked down the Dillinger gang at Little Bohemia. Read on for Carl's part in the shoot-out!

Baby Face Nelson

We had been very busy, Ann and I. She was making sandwiches, she did a lot of that, sandwiches, and I was tending bar and everything else and we hadn’t even had a chance to eat anything because the people kept coming and coming and coming. So that was toward evening when two fellows walked in. They wanted to know if I was the constable, which I had been elected constable. I says, “Yes.” Well, they says, we need your help. We think we’ve got Dillinger locked up in Little Bohemia but in case they should get loose, we need you to go and show us how to set up road blocks, where we can set up road blocks and roads that were going out from there. So I says all right.

So I got my jacket on [now located in the Frank B. Koller Memorial Library in Manitowish Waters], and I had a pair of old shoes on and a cap. I says to Ann, my wife, I says we’ll be back in a little while and we’ll get a couple of sandwiches. We’ll make some for these men too and I’ll have something to eat. But I never got back. And you know the rest of the story from there on.

Dillinger & Emil Wanatka, owner of Little Bo

We stopped at Koerner’s to check a car out there. Baby Face [Nelson] was in that car and he shot Newman under the hat and also Brown [sic]* was shot right above his vest, through the throat, and he caught me with eight bullets. I never found out till after I was out of the hospital that George La Porte was walking back and forth with a rifle in the crutch of his arm. So I asked George one day what he was doing. Oh, he says, I was on guard, he says, in case they should come back. And another thing I found out was when Emil Wanatka was being held prisoner by Baby Face Nelson in that car, which was George La Porte’s Model T Ford and when Nelson saw us coming he got out of the car. Emil got out and he crawled into a snowbank and he had dark trousers on and Emil told me, he says, I tried to cover my pants with snow, he says, so he wouldn’t see me. I was afraid he was going to shoot me. So all that came out after I was out of the hospital. So the rest of the story that’s newspaper, you have that in my scrap book. [at the Frank B. Koller Library in Manitowish Waters]

Johnny Depp in the Little Bo scene in Public Enemies

After I came home from the hospital, we had a tremendous business. All the publicity, newspaper stories about me and everything else. We really had people stopping, curiosity seekers. They wanted souvenirs from me, and so on and so forth. I had postal cards made up with my picture on it and sometimes they’d buy four or five of them, take them along to give them to friends. I had that much publicity. So things were going along real good and we were taking in money and it was really, in those days, rich money, you know, good money. So I go out to Hank Coonan, he had promised me that if I could make good of that place there he would sell it to me when we first started in. So I says to Hank, I says, now I’m in a position, I says, I can buy from you, buy your share out, buy the building off you. Oh, no, no, he says, I can’t sell that, he says, that’s too valuable a piece of property now. Well, I says, if that’s the case then I’m just going to pull my share out. You can pay me off and I’ll pull out and you can get somebody else to run it. Which he did.

*While our transcript records the name as Brown, Carl Christensen most likely meant to refer to W. Carter Baum.

bang! bang! you're dead, or, Public Enemies scene at Little Bo

For those interested in such things, here is a YouTube video of the shoot out at Little Bohemia Lodge from the 2009 film Public Enemies. The film starred Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Marion Cotillard. Despite a good week of filming and interrupting people's sleep with machine gun shots at 2 am, the part that takes place in Manitowish Waters occupies a relatively short part of the film. Also, as we locals cannot help but notice, the outside scenes were clearly not filmed up here. Only the inside of the lodge is "authentic."

Although the cast is impressive, the film disappointed this viewer as it seemed more of a "shoot 'em up" than to possess any redeeming value. In fact, it makes one wonder about the values of our society -- why is the hero (or anti-hero) of the film Dillinger himself, a man who by all accounts appears to have been pretty repulsive, and who doesn't impress as anything else even being portrayed by Johnny Depp? I am not saying that the main character should have been Christian Bale's character, the FBI agent Purvis, who appeared equally uninteresting. OK, so basically I am wondering what good making this movie did for anyone at all, except for local businesses who profited from the monetary income.

Nevertheless, it is a moment of fame for the Northwoods. Let us revel in our brief moment of glory.

Images Frozen in Time: Little Bohemia

Dillinger's belongings

How Manitowish Waters Became a Four-Season Vacation Area

The following article, excerpted here, appeared in the Vilas County New Review Centennial Issue (2/19/86):

an old ad for Voss's Birchwood Lodge

At one time, it was the logging industry here that kept Manitowish Waters booming, but the big logging activity ceased between 1911 (when the last Yawkey-Bissell activity ceased; that firm's last local camp was near Mud [Fawn] Lake) and 1914 (when the last logs had been shipped from the hoist at Star Lake).

In 1919 the Milwaukee Road removed its track along the north side of the chain; the spur to the C&NW was quietly taken up around the same time.

The lone sawmills to operate after that era in the area were operated by Bob Loveless, who cut timber in the few pockets of Virgin Forest during the 1920s, and Marvin Loveless, who ran a small mill into the 1940s or 1950s.

The resort business developed alongside the homesteading that brought the early settlers to this area. First to offer hospitality to sportsmen and other visitors in a lodge was Abe LaFave. In 1892, George Buck settled some land at the narrows between Spider and Manitowish Lakes, probably by homesteading it. He too developed a resort business, which stayed in the Buck family until it was sold in 1916 to the Koerners, who began operations under their name the next year.

What is now Deer Park Lodge was begun in the 1890s by one J.A. La Motte of Wausau; its succeeding owners included Jay A. "Dad" Paine, Max Engemann and Charlie Doriot. After spending several summers camping here, Henry Voss built his first cottage in 1909, and opened an American Plan resort in 1911.

By 1927, area residents were chafing at what they felt was neglect by the town of Flambeau, to which the present day Manitowish Waters then belonged, and they succeeded in having the state legislature pass a bill creating the new town of Spider Lake. The new town built a town hall during the next biennium and a modern school soon after. That school was outgrown and was enlarged twice before it was replaced in 1971 by a new, complete plant on Highway K that is a consolidation of the grade schools for several North Lakeland communities.

The town board also authorized a community cemetery in 1935, and the first burials date from 1936.

Koerner's Spider Lake Resort

The Thirties brought the town new distinctions. One was the distinction of having its own fish hatchery, said to be the only municipal hatchery in the state.

It was also in the early 1930s, 1934 to be exact, that desperado John Dillinger brought the area instant notoriety. Detected hiding out at Little Bohemia, he fled lawmen in a shootout that cost two lives.

Manitowish Waters was a more appropriate name for the chain of lakes area, and in 1937 the name of the town was changed from Spider Lake to Manitowish Waters.