by Brad Herzog
Here’s something you might not know about the Statue of Liberty: Many historians believe that, while the copper statue represents the Roman goddess Libertas, Lady Liberty’s face may have been modeled after someone familiar to French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi—his mother.
Kind of changes your perspective about it, right? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses… and clean up your room!”
Camp Nebagamon’s version of the Statue of Liberty, on the other hand, is modeled on a legend, through and through. The man at the entrance to the 77 acres is all myth. But what a myth it is.
Paul Bunyan is a giant of American folklore, both literally and figuratively. He has been the subject of countless articles, poems, stories, songs, and stage productions. In a 1958 Disney animated short musical, Paul Bunyan, the voice of Paul was the same fellow who voiced Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger. The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short.
Paul’s likeness rises above dozens of American places—from Bemidji (Minnesota) to Bangor (Maine), from Old Forge (New York) to Eau Claire (Wisconsin), from Manistique (Michigan) and Muncie (Indiana) to the Mall of America. There’s an annual Paul Bunyan Mountain and Blues Festival in Westwood, California. And during Paul Bunyan Days in Maries, Idaho, people flock to the Blue Ox, billed as the “Biggest Topless Bar in Idaho.” That’s because it has no roof.
So many places claim Paul as their own that his origins are rather murky. On November 6, 2006, the state of Michigan designated the town of Oscoda as the “Official Home of Paul Bunyan” because the Oscoda Press published the first Bunyan story exactly a century earlier. But the myth of Paul likely stems from the oral traditions of North American loggers—fragmented, hyperbolic stories told in bunkhouses. And, in fact, the earliest recorded written reference to Paul Bunyan is said to be an uncredited 1904 editorial in… the Duluth News Tribune.
There is an upper Midwestern focus to much of Paul’s tale. Indeed, when a member of the Wisconsin Historical Society named Michael Edmonds wrote a definitive summary of the larger-than-life lumberjack, he called his book Out of the Northwoods: The Many Lives of Paul Bunyan. Edmonds concluded that Paul’s stories originated from woodsmen in Wisconsin lumber camps at the turn of the 20th century. Which begs a titillating question: Were some of those early tales told in Lake Nebagamon?
But accounts of Paul range from coast to coast. Some stories have him born in Maine, a child so large that five large birds had to carry him to his parents, so thirsty that it took ten cows to supply milk for him, so hungry that it took 50 eggs a day to feed him. He was a future lumberjack with the eating habits of the Lumberjack Village.
Paul was so strong that he could clear enormous wooded areas with one swing of his massive axe. He was so fast that he could turn off a light and jump into bed before the room got dark. Yes, Paul Bunyan tales are constructed of exaggeration layered on top of embellishment.
There is a Logger Lover-ish aspect to much of the Bunyan myth—in the form of winters beyond belief. Babe the Blue Ox? His distinctive hue came from a “winter of blue snow,” an entire season of bright blue snowflakes that permanently changed his color. And that same year, so the story goes, ol’ Paul marched through a storm in search of firewood. But he dragged his heavy axe behind him, accidentally carving out a canyon. The Grand Canyon, in fact.
Yes, if there is an American wonder, there is generally a Paul Bunyan myth behind it. The Great Lakes? Those were watering holes he created for Babe. Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes? Merely Paul’s and Babe’s footprints. New York’s Finger Lakes? Paul tripped and used his hand to break his fall. Oregon’s Mount Hood? One day, Paul tried to smother a campfire with rocks. The Missouri River? Formed from Paul’s tears after Babe went to that pasture in the sky.
So is the Paul Bunyan story folklore? Or is it, as some historians contend, “fakelore”—a literary invention passed off as an older folktale. Most of the modern stories of Paul, they say, are composed of elements that don’t stem from the original folk tales. Or are the origins something else entirely? A few authors have suggested that there may be a connection between Paul Bunyan’s exploits and those of a powerful French-Canadian lumberjack who worked in Northern Michigan and Wisconsin in the decade following the Civil War, a fellow by the name of Fabian “Joe” Fournier. The man apparently met his demise in a drunken brawl at the hands of a stonemason named Blinky—I’m not making this up—in 1875.
But that name… Fournier… Fournier… Fornear? Could it be that longtime Nebagamon associate director Adam Fornear (below, dressed as the Bull of the Woods on Paul Bunyan Day, 2008) is actually related to the Paul Bunyan?
That would be legendary.
