DETROIT LAKES, Minn. — County museums often do a good job of celebrating county history.
“We are one of the oldest historical societies in the state,” said Becky Mitchell, executive director of the Becker County Museum.
At first glance, the Becker County Museum in Detroit Lakes is like any other museum. You have Native American history, natural history and then you have a strange sort of history.
“Sometimes history is subjective. Let’s just put it that way,” said Mitchell.
In fact, some of the artifacts here are so odd that they were featured in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.” That includes the world’s tiniest gas station. It was owned and operated by the Sauer Brothers in the early 1900s.
“And due to its location right in the middle of the road essentially, it was 3.5 by 4 feet wide,” said Mitchell.
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The gallery has one woman in particular to thank for their rare artifacts. Her name was Mary Lewis and she operated the Lewis Hotel. She didn’t like cussing and she didn’t like people arguing over religion and politics. So, she gave her guests other things to talk about — a two-headed calf.
“She was a genius. She came up with all these different things. She had a mind for curio-hunting,” Typhanie Shafer said.
During the heydays of the Lewis Hotel, railroad workers were a big part of the business. Mary enjoyed their company and she enjoyed her parrots, but the railroad workers took it upon themselves to expand the birds’ vocabulary. She went through 12 different parrots. The twelfth is on display.
“What happened to them once they got a foul mouth? They flew south,” John Lauritsen said.
“She disappeared them,” Shaffer responded.
When the hotel closed, its artifacts eventually made their way here. Included was a giant ball of string that hotel workers put together from parcels and packages. It won’t be mistaken with Darwin’s Great Ball of Twine, but there’s more here than meets the eye.
“Now it’s 42 pounds and 140 miles long,” said Shafer.
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There’s also a wolf named “Old Three Legs” who once had a national bounty put on him for killing livestock. And there’s a Becker County meteorite that was discovered in 1936.
“The story is the sons found it at the time, they took it to school in their little red wagon,” said Mitchell.
The idea behind all of this is to show that every town has a story. Those stories might get a little longer over the years, but quite often, they’re the fabric of rural Minnesota.
“That’s what I think makes county museums so unique. It’s the stories behind it, it’s the passion of why people collected it and why they found it intriguing. It’s fun to share those stories,” said Mitchell.
Museum employees say paranormal teams have studied the artifacts over the years, including the parrot, believing it might be haunted. The museum recently moved into a new location in Detroit Lakes and it now has a children’s science center upstairs. Click here to learn more.
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