Dirty Pete: The Unofficial Mayor of Craigville, Minnesota by Chris Marcotte
Through a handful of letters discovered at a yard sale, a bit of curiosity, and a lot of research, I have had the privilege of learning more about a northern Minnesota bachelor known by most in his later years as Dirty Pete. However, these weren’t the words used to describe him in his younger days. Most considered Pete quite a ladies’ man.
Peter Anton Weigant was born in 1870 to German immigrants Johann and Augusta in Spring Valley, Illinois. He left his family as a young man and worked odd jobs as he traveled west. In 1902, while in Minneapolis, he met men who talked of the nearly free land they could get, just for logging it. The government had opened a vast acreage of this wooded land in Itasca County for ambitious folks to homestead if they wanted.
With nothing else planned, Pete traveled north. Not necessarily for the land, but for the excitement of a new adventure. Pete lived in abandoned cabins for several years, as he decided whether the wilderness suited him. He did not mind working for other men, as he needed to keep food on his table.
Pete was articulate and witty, so he filled in at the Bigfork Settler when the newspaper editor wanted to get away. Eventually he filed a claim on a hundred-acre homestead in Busti Township, near Effie, which was ten miles north of Bigfork.
Even though he lived in the woods, Pete never missed an opportunity to attend a dance at a schoolhouse or a neighborhood party. He owned the only tuxedo anyone in the area had ever seen. He kept his tux in a knapsack and carried it on his back. When Pete arrived at the dance location, he would get behind a brush pile, change his clothes and come out wearing the tuxedo, with his hair slicked back and his shoes somewhat shined. Pete hoped to capture the heart of the Bigfork school teacher. She, however, had her eye set on a lumberjack whom she soon married.
Although no other eligible young ladies captured Pete’s interest, something else did. In 1912, the Minneapolis & Rainy River railroad extended north from Effie and named the new depot Craigville. Pete sold his homestead and built a small store with his living quarters in the back. He stocked canned goods, cigarettes, and a few other essential items for lumberjacks—wool socks, long underwear, various ointments, and letter-writing supplies.
Overnight, Craigville became a hub of activity, and businesses which lumberjacks frequented, such as saloons, hotels, cafes, and bathhouses were built. Over a thousand men, who filled the logging camps to the north, needed a place to spend their time and money on Saturdays and Sundays.
Pete didn’t have a fancy sign out front, but everyone knew where his store was. Pete’s place was where anyone stopped who wanted to know which logging camps were hiring and where to get the cheapest booze. Because his store was right next to the depot, Pete also served as the depot agent. He sold tickets and handled incoming and outgoing mail. He was the first to know the latest news—either from passengers or by unloading merchandise folks ordered from the Sears catalogue. Without a doubt. Pete had found his niche.
When the Craigville Post Office needed a new location in 1918, Pete applied for and was awarded the position of postmaster by the federal government. On mail day, he was at the depot when the train arrived. He would tuck the bundle, usually a stack six to eight inches high, wrapped in newspaper and tied with store string, under his arm. Returning to his shop, Pete would flip the sign on the door from open to closed, stand at the designated post office counter, and sort the mail without bystanders. Pete took his responsibilities to heart.
Some postmasters or mistresses looked at both sides of postcards, but Pete gave them nary a glance unless they had a cartoon or a joke. Never hurt to have a chuckle or an occasional belly laugh. It’s true, Pete liked to be in the know. However, he did not read the notes scribbled on the postcards. Whatever was written was sure to be shared with him by the owner in short order, and that is how he preferred to get his information. Soon he would have the stack sorted into four piles—postcards, business-sized envelopes, magazines, and personal letters. Then he’d sort it by owner.
Pete saved every piece of unclaimed mail that came to the Craigville Post Office because he knew some lumberjacks didn’t come out of the woods for months and when they did, they’d be glad he had not stamped a letter addressed to them, “return to sender.” His dedication impressed his friends, but they were concerned as the boxes of undelivered mail occupied two walls, three feet high, in his living quarters.
Towards the end of his reign as postmaster, Pete developed a peculiar habit which was never explained. He did not bathe. Ever. Not even a dip in the river when the long underwear season was over. There are those who say it started when he was spurned by another woman he courted. Others assumed it was because there was no city water in Craigville. Pete would not even use river water for his dishes. Instead, he cleaned them as well as his pots and pans with newspaper. At fifty years of age, Pete made a new name for himself. Some called him “Greasy Pete,” but the name that stuck, and which he seemed to favor, was “Dirty Pete.”
Perhaps the situation wasn’t as bad as folks made it sound, but in December 1922, Pete received an official letter relieving him of his postmaster status, citing cleanliness concerns, and the contract went to another business. Since the new postmistress did not have the time or inclination to maintain the mail not picked up, Pete continued to do so.
His fondness for letters included writing them, and he responded to any he received, whether it was about wages in the lumber camps, fishing in the nearby lakes, or a woman in search of her wayward husband. Undoubtedly, he wrote back because he marked each envelope with the date he replied. Pete enjoyed corresponding with acquaintances, and soon many became loyal friends, even if years went by between their visits to Craigville.
The postmaster position paid enough so that Pete bought a car and was the only person in town who had a telephone. Pete’s place remained a hub of social activity for the lumberjacks and anyone else who wanted to know what was happening. Rumors persisted that Pete arranged for the chippies (call-girls) to come into Craigville. Most of the letters to Pete that I read spanned the years 1927-1938, when he was in his late 50s and 60s. Based on the letters he saved, the rumor was true.
Pete wrote or called the chippies when the town might need their services. Quite a few of the letters were from Bessie, Goldie, Lillian, Mae, Millie, and Minnie. Most of these chippies seemed to know one another, and many moved between the northern Minnesota towns of Big Falls, Craigville, Effie, International Falls, and Ranier.
Pete’s correspondence with these women included terms of endearment. Though none were love letters, they trusted him with their secrets. Occasionally one of them asked him to help secure bail, to let someone know they were in jail, or to pass on the news that one of their own had died.
To supplement his income, Pete was always up early after there was a wild night in town. Walking the streets he found enough cash to last him through the next big night. He also occasionally rented his backroom to a chippy, with a promise she did not touch any of his belongings, including the mail he guarded.
The last large log drive went down the Big Fork River in the early thirties. They removed the railroad tracks and closed down the logging camps. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 spelled the beginning of the end for Craigsville. But Pete stayed, and the piles of undelivered mail grew. A friend of mine was a boy in the early 1940s and recalls visiting Pete with his father. He remembered that the old man, then in his seventies, wore overalls so worn that the denim was shiny. The place Pete occupied was about twelve by sixteen feet and was no longer a business. The boy remembered no windows and recalled that both rooms held newspapers, magazines, and letters stacked along every wall, about as tall as he was.
The piles of mail were last seen just before the 1950 Craigville flood. At that time, it was stacked nearly to the ceiling with only narrow paths to get from room to room. Pete was still adamant about saving the mail in case someone came to retrieve theirs. When the Big Fork River rose four feet above the banks, the entire town flooded. As it receded, the water took piles of mail with it.
Pete passed away in July 1955 in his mid-eighties, around the same time they removed the Craigsville road signs. I was born several years later, so I never met the man, though I would have enjoyed a conversation with him. I have seen two photographs of Pete, one when he was a young man leading a team of Percherons with a load of logs from the northern Minnesota woods, and the other when he was an old man with a snow-white beard and a face the color of burnished copper. Pete remained a bachelor. He did not visit his family in Illinois. And he never traveled further than fifty miles from the small town he loved.
Craigville lived and died with the logging industry, and Pete lived and died with Craigville. However, he would be over the moon to know that seven decades after his death, folks still knew his name.
Judges’ Comments:
“A funny and colorful story, told with charm, energy, and understanding.”
“An interesting story that moved well—Dirty Pete was a bit north of normal! Great story!”
Lake Superior Writers 