Northlandia: Toimi School keeps Finnish immigrant history alive

TOIMI, Minn. — Walking into Toimi School is like taking a walk back in time. The two-room schoolhouse, built by and for Finnish immigrants in the unincorporated community of Toimi in 1913, is filled with historic images and items from a time long ago.

Toimi sits about 50 miles north of Duluth in Lake County along a Superior National Forest Scenic Byway from Hoyt Lakes to Silver Bay. The school, 6486 Murphy Lake Road, closed in 1942 when the community started busing its students into Two Harbors.

"So my mother went there, and all of my aunts and uncles, but my family, we all went to Two Harbors," said Ron Johnson, member of the Toimi School Community Center. "I'm involved because my brothers and I own my grandparents' homestead half a mile down the road. They shared stories about what it was like back then."

Johnson grew up hearing stories about the school. His mother talked about how they all had to speak English when they stepped inside the building, despite mostly speaking Finnish at home."And there was a cabinet right inside the building here where there were all these cups in it and each kid was assigned a cup to use when they drank water from the well that was brought in daily," Johnson said. "That's what the little building right outside was for, it was the pumphouse, though it's not the original. We rebuilt that and put a bunch of photos inside to show off the area's history."

The school started as a one-room schoolhouse, but the community soon outgrew it and added a second building. Students in lower grades were in one room, while fourth through sixth graders went into the other building. Each classroom had its own entrance with a cloakroom right inside the doors.

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"You can see where there used to be a wall that divided the two classes," Johnson said. "And if you wanted more school after sixth grade, you had to go to Two Harbors."

Much of the building is not the original, right down to the floorboards that were replaced when the community board bought the building back from Lake County in the 1990s. After the school was closed in 1942, it sat vacant for many years until the Superior National Forest took it over to use as a storage room in the 1960-70s. Later, Lake County began using it as a garage, removing one wall to make way for the garage door.

"The good thing about the county doing that is that they put a roof on the building and that preserved it," Johnson said. "That's why it's in such good condition today. Then, in 1991, the county wanted to stop using the building for storage and they turned it over to our group of community members."

The volunteers put in a new floor from an old high school gymnasium and a wall with matching siding to the rest of the building. The front of the building had been mostly untouched, with two entrances, two cloak rooms and living quarters for the former teachers. Over the years, community members donated various items that matched the correct time period or were originally from the school building.

"For example, some people who bought an old homestead found all these books and paperwork that they used in their home in the attic," Johnson said. "So these were the actual books and handwriting pages and spelling tests that were given back then. It's pretty cool that they were saved for all that time."

Relatives brought in old photos of their classes taken in the 1920s and '30s. Others researched and found a similar wooden stove to what would have warmed the building back then.

"I'd never seen a stove this size before, but they had this guard around them, you know, in case the kids fell into it, so they wouldn't get burned," Johnson said. "And they would have hired somebody who would come in every morning and started firing up the stove so that the building was warm when the kids showed up for school."

The volunteers also received aerial photographs of the Toimi area from 1937 and 2008, which they hung along the wall next to the school's restrooms. During the summer, the restrooms are open and people are welcome to make a pit stop when traveling along the forest highway. Signs next to each restroom read "poika" and "tytto" for "boy" and "girl."

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The building is now open for the summer and visitors are welcome to stop in and get a tour of the 110-year-old building from volunteers on the weekends. Anyone interested in serving on the community center's board or in helping staff the building can reach out through the Toimi School Facebook page.

As for Johnson, he said he keeps volunteering because it keeps people connected to history.

"I think it's worth preserving," Johnson said. "We all love history and we love finding out more about our heritage. I think that's one of the main factors for why we keep doing this. This was a Finnish community that survived off of the co-op movement and I think we all inherited that community spirit."

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