28-02-2025
Cloquet postmaster to swear in Beargrease mushers
Feb. 28—CLOQUET — In 1879, no roads connected the Minnesota North Shore. Its remote communities, which relied on the U.S. Postal Service to communicate with the outside world, could have their mail delivered via boat during the warmer months. But once Lake Superior froze there was only one way to deliver mail: dog sled.
The man most remembered for delivering mail to these remote communities with his team of sled dogs was John Beargrease. Now nearly 150 years later, Cloquet postmaster McKinzie Korpela will carry on the tradition.
Korpela will swear in mushers as legal Postal Service mail carriers before they compete in the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon, which begins on Sunday, March 2.
"We sometimes forget about how important the mail is and or was," Korpela said. "So it's really neat that we can carry such a neat and long lasting tradition for these mushers and everybody."
The swearing-in will happen during opening ceremonies at the Buffalo House outside Duluth on Saturday, March 1, where Korpela will lead mushers in the oath of office. Mushers will then be legally able to carry commemorative "trail mail" being mailed specifically for the sled dog race.
The commemorative envelope will be signed by a musher and receive a stamped cancellation which reads "carried by dog sled." The mail will then be picked up by Mike Keyport, the race's president and great-grandson of Beargrease. He will deliver it personally to the U.S. Postal Service where it will enter the regular mail stream.
"We're putting the trust in the mushers to get that trail mail from point A to point B," Korpela said.
Keyport said the Cloquet postmaster has a long history of leading the swearing-in ceremony for John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon, which was founded in 1980 and is the longest sled dog race in the United States outside of Alaska.
Most recently, the swearing in was led by former Cloquet postmaster Todd Manisto, according to Keyport. Manisto retired from the Postal Service in April. Korpela became the Cloquet postmaster in May and agreed to keep the tradition of a Cloquet postmaster leading the ceremony alive.
Before becoming a postal worker in 2012, Korpela recalls learning about the adventures of Beargrease when she was a student at Carlton High School.
"It's cool to know the different, like, how the process of mail works and how it transformed," she said. "Like they didn't have mail there for how long? And they were like, 'Nope, you got to get mail up there' and this crazy man with a dog sled was like 'I'll do it.'"
Though the Postal Service can sometimes be taken for granted, Korpela is grateful that the legacy of Beargrease and his efforts to deliver mail are still remembered.
"It's a cool tradition to keep going," she said. "It keeps postal history at the forefront."
