BJ Book - Boulder Junction

History: Why Boulder Junction
Where the name “Boulder Junction” came from…
The first time Boulder Junction is recorded as the name for this place was in a
railroad schedule from before 1910. Boulder Junction was just a part of Arbor Vitae
until it was incorporated and officially named in 1927. Postmaster Samuel Williams
proposed that the town incorporate under the name it had been given two decades
earlier when the Brooks and Ross Lumber Company laid a logging railway across that
of the Yawkey Bissell Logging Company at a site not far from Boulder Lake.
Back in the 1930s, a Chicago-based sportswriter who regularly
vacationed in the Boulder Junction area, coined the phrase,
“Musky Capital of the World” to describe his favorite fishing
destination. Local resorts picked up on the
idea and over the course of the next 11 or 12
years, used the term intermittently on their
promotional literature.
In 1942, the newly-formed Chamber of
Commerce began using the title on all of its
brochures and other printed matter and it
has done so ever since.
June 8, 1971, the United States Patent
Office awarded Boulder Junction the U.S.
Trademark for the MUSKY CAPITAL OF
THE WORLD. This trademark was awarded
by virtue of the fact that more muskies are
caught on our lakes every year than any other
similar sized area in the world.
page 26