Sam’s Legacy Lives
Cohodas’ Log Lodge Offers U.P. History Tour
By DENNIS KNICKERBOCKER
Lansing State Journal
October 2, 1994
CHAMPION—With all its maples and moose, this part of the Upper Peninsula is a natural for early-fall color touring.
Thanks to Sam Cohodas, your imagination can also tour back to an era when a U.P. hunting camp was more than a buck pole and an ice chest full of Old Milwaukee.
Michigamme Lake Lodge, a bed and breakfast 30 miles west of Marquette on U.S. 41, is such a fine example of the grand old Adirondack style of log lodge that it’s listed on the national and state registers of historic places.
A U.P. legend in his own right, Cohodas had the lodge built by six Finnish woodsmen in the winter of 1934-35. He may not have been a hunter, but he certainly was a Yooper.
Cohodas came to the United States with his family in the early 1900s from Byelorussia to escape persecution of Jews. In 1915, he and a brother started Houghton’s first fruit and vegetable market.
Cohodas’ warehouse produce business expanded, becoming one of the largest in the country, and he established orchards from Michigan to Washington. In the 1930s, he went into banking and eventually owned seven U.P. banks.
Then, every year for 40 years, he gave away a quarter-million dollars to charities, scholarships, and other causes. And every day until his death in 1988 at the age of 92, he was a U.P. booster.
He hired architect David E. Anderson of Marquette to design the lodge. It’s just east of where the Peshekee River flows into Michigamme, the Upper Peninsula’s second-largest lake.
The lodge was used continuously from 1935 to 1987 by the Cohodas family. In 1989, it was sold to Linda and Frank Stabile of Negaunee, who also own the Day’s Inn in Marquette.
“They’re collectors,” said Barbara Sacks, manager of the bed-and-breakfast resort. “They finished and decorated the place. I think this is sort of their ultimate acquisition in antiquing.”
Heads of trophy elk and deer; a bearskin rug on a wall next to a massive cut-stone fireplace in the Grand Room; whole mounts of various critters; ancient wooden skis and snowshoes; old photos; Native American blankets, and other artifacts give the place a museum quality.
Sacks, a Boston native, moved with her friend Greg from Newport, R.I., to the U.P. in 1992.
“He’s from Marquette,” she said. “That’s what landed us back here.”
Sacks was managing a bakery in Marquette when she answered a newspaper advertisement for her present job. Still baking, she’s up early every morning to make delicious things from scratch.
The first morning it was cheese blintzes. The second, it was Finnish baked pancakes with fresh blueberries on top. Both mornings there were fresh melons and warm muffins full of strawberries and nut meats.
Breakfast is in a windowed dining room overlooking the lake. My wife, Connie, remarked about the touch of elegance Sacks adds to the setting.
I missed breakfast the second day to go fishing in the lodge’s 14-foot rental boat, but Sacks had muffins, juice, and coffee waiting when I got back at 10.
Other guests while we were there included Suzi and Gordon Tengen of Mount Pleasant. Their stay was a retirement gift from co-workers at the Delfield Co. in their hometown.
The Tengens had the largest and plushest room in the lodge. Called Sam’s Room, it offers an impressive view of the lake and bluff. One other sleeping room, Van Riper, is on the first floor.
Our room, Lookout, was one of seven on the upper floor, arranged off balconies overlooking the Grand Room.
Lookout has just enough space.
Just to the east is Van Riper State Park, which has an information center on the 1985 and 1987 moose lifts, in which 59 moose were brought from Canada and released a few miles northwest of the park.
A few miles west on U.S. 41 is the Mount Shasta Restaurant and lounge. Scenes from the movie Anatomy of a Murder were filmed there, and Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick stayed and dined there in 1959.
From the Lansing State Journal - October 2, 1994
