Lake Chippewa Flowage Vacation

Napoleon Paul Lessard was born near the St. Lawrence River on July 12, 1863 in Sainte-Ursule-Maskinonge, Quebec, Canada, to Jean Baptiste and Emelie (Beland) Lessard. Family lore states that Paul’s older brothers Pierre “French Pete” and Adolph had immigrated from Canada to the Chippewa River country sometime between 1872 and 1874. Records show that Peter had homesteaded a 162-acre claim off the west bank of the Chippewa River about two miles northeast of Ojibwa by 1874. His brother Adolph ended up purchasing 120 acres for himself about a mile to the northeast in April of 1875 and, over the next ten years, he ended up acquiring four additional parcels of land in the Bishop’s Bridge vicinity.

Peter sold his 162-acre spread to his brother Adolph for $3200 in February of 1878 and, shortly thereafter, moved to Chippewa Falls where he and his wife ran a saloon and boarding house. Younger brother Paul Lessard first came to the United States in 1890 and lived near his older brother Peter in Chippewa Falls. Paul returned to Canada and married Georgina Allard in June of 1892. The young couple then returned to the US and purchased the Chippewa River stopping place from Mrs. Manwaring late the same year, for a time making their home near Bishop’s Bridge. It was during that same time frame when Adolph Lessard had taken over the Crane Creek stopping place, so it is likely that Paul and Georgina were living on one of his properties…. perhaps the farm that was first homesteaded by brother Peter.

In addition to running the stopping place, Paul Lessard earned income by working in the woods and running a logging camp. However, once the new couple got their stopping place up and running and had the place paid off in 1895, Paul was able to refurbished his riverside stopping place by adding new hardwood flooring, plaster on the inner walls, and clapboard siding onto the 16 inch thick hewn logs of the exterior walls. From that point on, they had a fine home of their own to move into where they could raise their 7 children (Ida, Hazel, Ulda, Wildred, Harry, Edna, & Lester).

Corlie Dunster – whose father and mother ran the Government Day School in Old Post during the 1890’s – fondly remembered the Lessard place during those years, recalling, “The Paul Lessard family lived about 5 miles south of the Post on the Chippewa River. They had a stopping place and a saloon, and we often visited them. The saloon was in the front part of the main building. The “hotel” rooms were upstairs over the saloon. The land from the house and other buildings sloped down to the Chippewa River.”

One of the Lessard’s sons, Harry Lessard, was born in 1903 and he later became quite well known as a fishing guide after the Chippewa Flowage was formed. I was fortunate to get to know him and interview him about forty years ago when he was eighty years old. Harry told me many stories of those days: “By the time I was a little shaver, the loggers had pretty much cleaned out the pineries of the Chippewa headwaters, the logging trade had dropped off, and dad (Paul) turned more to farming, cutting timber, and the taking in of guests as his source of income. Many visitors stayed at our place over the years. Times were changing and the cliental changed over from loggers in the early days to fisherman, hunters, and transients.”

Harry continued, “We had a big eleven room house – which came to be known as a hotel – so we had plenty of spare room for guests. The house had rooms on the sides with a big hall (saloon) where the guys use to play poker, drink, and sit around and talk. We also had cabins for additional guests, one of which had 4 rooms. Some people would come and stay all summer, not leaving until the first snows of Fall arrived. Rich guys like William Wrigley from the chewing gum factory in Chicago would stay with us and rent one of our cabins all summer and fish with Indian guides on the river. Old man Wrigley sure was pretty handy with passing out his chewing gum to us kids.”

As time went on at Lessard’s “hotel and resort” – as it came to be known –fishing became perhaps the primary draw to luring pioneer tourists to their Chippewa River escape. Fishing tales were never in short supply with Harry. He went on, “My dad like to fish but his methods were rather primitive by today’s standards. Rods and reels weren’t used… just a heavy chalk line with a skinner spoon and pork rind. We’d go out on the river and one guy would row while the other would hold the line and drag the lure behind the boat and wait for a strike. After the fish hit and got hooked, we’d have to haul in the catch hand over hand. Dad took a lot of fish that way – mostly pike (walleye) – be he did get his share of muskies too. The West and East Forks of the Chippewa River always contained muskies but they weren’t easy to catch. I acquired the first rod and reel in our family when I was only 8 or 10 years old. I would go out fishing with old man Writtenhouse and one day he gave me my first rod & reel. From then on I was hooked!”

Harry Lessard was very familiar with the Old Post village because he had to go that way every time he went to Hayward. The road to town went right through there. Harry’s father had taken him to visit his friend Thad Thayer at his hotel many times. He also remembered Billy DeBrot who had a small log cabin resort across the river from Thayer’s hotel, on the peninsula that the river bends around. Many tourists came to stay at his camp.

Life along the West Fork was due for drastic change, however, following World War I. Word quickly spread that a dam was going to be constructed near the Lessard place and the whole area would be flooded for miles by the creation of a huge reservoir. At first, the dam site was proposed to be built at the narrows where the Se-ge-ni-gay farm was located – about a mile upriver from the Lessard place. If that would have happened, the Lessard place would have been spared from being flooded; however, in order to include both the West and East Forks of the Chippewa River to flow into the proposed reservoir, it was decided to build the dam about a mile downstream of the Lessard place.

Like everyone else who was about to have their homes, farms, property, and way of life washed away by the coming floodwaters, the Lessard family didn’t have much choice in the matter. And being the closest residents to the dam site they would be the very first of scores of people to become displaced. Harry had lamented, “The money we were offered by the power company wasn’t nearly enough to properly compensate us for all our property.” His father Paul was ailing at the time, so the family wasn’t prepared try to fight the power company and possibly risk losing their offer.

By January and February of 1923, the first flood waters began creeping up the riverbanks and threatening Lessard’s buildings. Harry’s brother Wilfred frantically put the word out by advertising for someone to purchase and remove all the lumber from their eleven buildings which needed be removed immediately because of the coming flowage. By early April the last remaining buildings of the Lessard place were finally demolished and removed just as the water was reaching the building sites.

The Lessards moved to Hayward that spring where Harry’s mother Georgina purchased the Tourist Café (now known as the Moccasin Bar). Two years later she sold the café and purchased 5 acres of land where the West Fork entered the “new” flowage from John and Mary Bellille Potack. There they built one of the first resorts on the Chippewa Flowage and called it Lessard’s Riverside Resort.