Gems of Itasca: The Bovey Edition
Bovey is an historical jewel on the Iron Range, known for its rich mining history in the early 1900s. It’s also the home of the world-famous 1918 photograph Grace.
Bovey was bustling in the early 1900s. A major highway led through the town’s center and past the Renaissance Revival-designed Bovey Village Hall, which still stands today and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Opposite Bovey Village Hall was the Bovey Mercantile store, the biggest hardware store in Northern Minnesota at the time. Now known as Annabella’s Antiques, legend has it that part of the store operated as a speakeasy during prohibition days. The still existing tunnel and side doors that led from the basement out to the alleyway is how the patrons escaped during fed raids, so the story goes.
The Gems of Itasca short-form video series is produced by A Plus B Productions.
More on Bovey and the Prohibition tunnel:
Duluth News Tribune: Iron Range business opens Prohibition escape tunnel
It’s a fun video, but the speakeasy escape tunnel story is more fiction than fact, according to an article by Beth Bily for this week’s Scenic Range NewsForum. Historians are calling the accuracy of the video into question.
It turns out that the part of the building that housed the hardware store and its tunnel wasn’t constructed until six years after Prohibition ended.