The Place by the Island: Legends of the Hiawatha: Tommy Page

I got to thinking about Tommy Page the other day when I drove across the new bridge the Forest Service built over the Indian River last year. Anyone who has ever canoed that stretch will know the spot. The old bridge dated to the Civilian Conservation Corps and wasn’t sturdy enough for today’s log trucks. For my lifetime it’s been called Tommy Page’s Bridge, and the Forest Service renewed that honor with a brand new sign.

Most people who canoe the river put in there and either get out at McCormick Landing or further south at Thunder Lake Road. I’ve put in at Fish Lake and Wide Waters before, and that adds a few hours to the trip. It usually takes the full day, regardless of how far you go, because you can paddle down in half the time it takes to float along with the current. We’re floaters. We’re never in a hurry.

I don’t know who Tommy Page was, or whether he helped build the original bridge or maybe was a “river hog.” When the U.P. was first cut over, the site of his bridge was originally the 10th and final dam in a series used to raise the water in the river high enough in the spring to send logs downstream.

The dams held back a winter’s worth of timber, and when they were opened, thousands of logs floated down on the surge of water created. River hogs rode the rafts to break up any jams.

Tommy may have been a river hog or a lumberjack or just a wanderer, but I know that he squatted there on federal land and lived out the later years of his life. A casual search turns up nothing but a reference to the bridge and a brief note that Tom was a hermit who lived near the site. I found a headstone in the Hiawatha Township Cemetery for “Tom Page, 1885-1965,” and I guess that would be him.

I know nothing else about him other than a story Gene Cotey told me several years ago. As a teenager in the late ’50s, Gene and a couple of friends were road hunting, and they stopped at Tommy’s shack. Knowing he was a squatter, they thought they’d tease him, so they asked him how much land he owned.

Tom asked them, “You ever been up in the Tie Hill tower?” referring to the old fire tower on Tie Hill, several miles to the south. Gene and his friends told him yes, they had been in the tower.

“Well, pretty much everything you can see from there,” was Tom’s reply.

There was a time not so long ago when the U.P. was wild and untamed and full of characters left over from the old days. They were tolerated on federal land because they usually did no harm, took only what they needed and gave rangers an extra pair of eyes and ears in a forest where we were still building roads.

I don’t know very much about Tommy Page’s life, but I think I would have liked him. And now he has a new bridge.