Fireplace of States

Originally a feature of the 1934 Paul Bunyan House, the Fireplace of States is a symbolic hearth and art project made to represent the cooperation of American states, national parks, and Canadian provinces. When the Paul Bunyan House was torn down in 1995, the fireplace was moved to a new Tourist Information Center on Lake Bemidji.

The Fireplace of States is part of Bemidji’s Tourist Information Center, which sits next to the statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox on the shore of Lake Bemidji. It is constructed of 900 rocks from every state in the union, every Canadian province, and all eighty-seven Minnesota counties. There are also stones from each national park. The fireplace contains stones from the US Capitol in Washington, DC, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's home in Hyde Park, New York, as well as a brick from the Statue of Liberty, a letter “M” and gopher stones from the University of Minnesota, and a piece of Old Fort Gary in Winnipeg

The fireplace was as an original feature of the Paul Bunyan House, which was built in 1934 under the Civil Works Administration (CWA) as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was located at 300 Bemidji Avenue in Bemidji. Like other CWA projects, it was intended to create jobs for unemployed and underemployed workers during the Great Depression.

The fireplace concept was conceived by Harry Roese, owner of the Shorecrest Resort, president of the local Civic and Commerce Association, and a district manager of the Federal Re-Employment Service. In 1934, he directed a secretary in his office, Kathleen Wilson, to send letters across the United States and Canada asking for rocks to be included in a fireplace that would unite pieces of geologic and social history from across the continent. Recipients responded enthusiastically, and Wilson marveled at how willing people were to send their rocks to Bemidji, considering the shipping costs. As each rock arrived, it was numbered with a pin, and an identification key was compiled.

Architect Charles Budge drew up the plans for an octagonal building—the Paul Bunyan House—that would house the fireplace. Stonemason Mark Morse designed and built the fireplace itself.

The Fireplace of States was lit for the first time on a Monday evening, September 24, 1934, at the Paul Bunyan Playground Association’s meeting. Resort owners and operators, businessmen and women, and other visitors gathered at the newly completed Tourist Information building to view the finished hearth. Roese explained the methods used to obtain the various stones and the unexpected cooperation he had received in the project.

The fireplace’s centerpiece is a stone depicting Shaynowishkung (the Ojibwe leader known to settler-colonists as Chief Bemidji) in St. Cloud granite. One stone is from the Connecticut statehouse of 1635, and one from the original wing of the United States capitol. Some of the stones are fossils. As of March 20, 1938, the Fireplace of States contained stones from every part of Canada and the United States from the Arctic Circle to the South Pole.

Stones were continually added to the fireplace over a period of six years. Two bricks and pieces of the 1792 stonework from the White House were added on May 22, 1939. Nearly 1,000 tourists visited the Fireplace of States on July 4, 1939, proving its popularity. New stones arrived yet again on November 4, 1939, for installation.

When a Tourist Information Center on the Lake Bemidji waterfront was built in 1995, the fireplace was shrink-wrapped and moved, intact, to the site of the new building. It was then moved inside with a crane and installed next to the statues of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe. Many of the original pins used to identify each rock were lost during the moving process. Although a list of donors and rock descriptions remained afterward, the only identifiable rocks were those engraved by their donors.