Preserving history on Lake Margaret

Couple restores resort to its early years for family and friends

By Nancy Vogt

In a time when small, mom-andpop resorts continue to shutter their doors after hosting generations of families for decades, one such resort on Lake Margaret gained a new, albeit a different, life.

Rainbow Bay Resort closed in 2017 after longtime owner Roger Reynolds died in his 90s. His wife, Helen, had died nearly a decade earlier.

Along came Mike and Kathy Ruhland, of Minneapolis, who purchased the run-down property in 2018 with an eye to the past.

Rather than tear down buildings and build a new home, they decided to restore the resort to its early years to host family and friends. They do not operate the resort as a business.

“They didn’t have any children, so the property went into an estate,” Mike Ruhland said of Roger and Helen Reynolds. “They pretty much cleaned out the main house, but everything else was as is — all the cabins and the old bar, which was also the check-in building. Everything was still jampacked with 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s stuff.

“We knew we were taking on quite a challenge, but we were eager to rescue this property,” he said.

Kathy had grown up visiting Samara Point Resort on Gull Lake with her family. Her parents, Tom and Connie Smith, of Rochester, Minnesota, later purchased a place at Causeway on Gull before then buying a cabin on Lake Margaret more than 30 years ago.

“As the family grew, we decided to start looking at property in the Gull Lake area,” Mike said.

That’s when they found Rainbow Bay Resort across the lake from the cabin.

When the Ruhlands first saw the property from the lake, the grounds were so overgrown they could hardly see the cabins, and the buildings had peeling paint.

But they could see it was an amazing property. Kathy loves architecture and design and could envision restoring the cabins and bar.

“My wife had a vision, and once it was redone and the bar was rebuilt, we brought it back to its glory days of yesteryear,” Mike said. “We worked with John Dotty and Dotty Brothers Construction on the remodel.

“Our vision was to bring the mom-andpop resort back to life,” he said.

As the remodel unfolded, Mike became interested in incorporating the resort’s history.

“There were so many memories I’m sure that people had since the 1940s on that property,” he said. “To take everything down and build something new, you lose all that history, and that’s something we wanted to preserve.

“It has been so much fun to learn about the history, the Rainbow Bay guests and all the fun that took place at the resort,” he said.

As an example, he said a former owner’s son, Johnny Palmer, recently dropped off an old movie showing a water ski show, “Ski Antics,” that took place in the ‘50s at Rainbow Bay.

Resort history

Roger and Helen Reynolds bought the small Rainbow Bay Resort in 1960 from John Palmer for $20,000, according to an August 1984 Brainerd Dispatch story. The resort had five cabins, and 16 years later they added six more cabins after buying neighboring resort Hallett’s Hideaway.

Through the years, the couple saw six of eight resorts on Lake Margaret close.

The Ruhlands’ property is actually where Myrt & Art’s Hideaway Resort, and later Hallett’s Hideaway, were once located.

“The property next to us was the original

Rainbow Bay Resort in the 1940s,” Mike said.

He has a guestbook from 1945-48 that has 67 pages with more than 480 signatures from guests staying at Myrt & Art’s Hideaway or from patrons of their bar. He’s taken on a project to learn more about the guests represented by those signatures.

“Today over 125 signatures have been identified and displayed in this book, giving historical LIFE to a small resort and bar on Lake Marga ret in the 1940s!” he wrote as part of the project.

Myrt and Art Anderson, who built the Hideaway Bar, sold that resort to the Halletts in 1948. It was Hallett’s Hideaway until 1976, when Roger and Helen Reynolds bought it and turned the whole property into Rainbow Bay Resort, which operated until 2000.

Helen had multiple sclerosis, and Roger couldn’t handle the big property on his own so he had his good friends, Glen and Sandy Cook along with Gary and Geri Cook, help finance and manage half of the property, which was renamed Rainbow Cottages.

Roger died in 2017, and the Ruhlands purchased Roger’s Rainbow Bay Resort in 2018. Vacationers who had already booked 2018 vacations, before Roger died, were allowed to stay at neighboring Rainbow Cottages that next summer.

“These mom and pops, as you know — they’re a little short on amenities but the guests that have been coming there for 20 years keep coming back,” Mike said. Keeping the unique property

Even before the thought of preserving history, the Ruhlands saw an opportunity to have a property that could accommodate a lot of guests and their growing family, with Kathy’s parents just across the lake.

“This was another spot where people could stay because our family continues to grow,” Mike said. “We can sleep 28 on the property and so we just have a lot of room for people to check out their own cabin for the weekend or however long they’re going to stay.”

Mike and Kathy loved the clubhouse space created in the bar, where both kids and adults can listen to music, dance, play games and have family dinners.

It was a lot of work to fix it up, but they saw the opportunities. It took five years to clean up the grounds, rebuild a cabin and the clubhouse bar, and remodel other cabins.

There are three cabins on the lake side and two more on the other side of the road that were used for storage. One of these cabins has since been donated to a veteran in need of housing through the Minnesota Veterans Project.

Throughout the process the Ruhlands found a lot of treasures.

“We are so thankful that nothing was emptied out. It’s a nightmare, but there’s so many finds that we’ve had as we go through these cabins and outbuildings — just the super cool, old, historical stuff that we’ve been able to repurpose,” Mike said.

He loves what he calls “the bottle graveyard,” where bottles and cans were dumped in the days before garbage pickup and recycling.

They have a glass case in the clubhouse bar, where resort guests once checked in, that displays historical items found on the property.

The resort walkways were so overgrown that no one knew they were lined with stone until Mike started digging. He was later told that Art Anderson loved working with rocks.

Bedrooms in the three waterfront cabins feature matching colored decor and custom-made fireplaces.

Mike has received historical items and photos from descendants of the previous resort owners, and he’s learned about the property from people who once stayed there.

“The history just keeps coming out, whether we’re finding things on the property or people are stopping by telling their stories,” Mike said.

That’s why Mike and Kathy are happy they kept the property’s history in mind.

The Hideaway Clubhouse/Bar entry features a display case where resort guests would check in that’s now filled with old items and photos from the resort, including Roger Reynolds’ coat and gloves found in the coat pockets at far left.

Maybe we’re sentimental, but we feel there’s an obligation to the guests.”

Mike said he feels an obligation to preserve the history of the past resort owners they were able to open the bar’s old cash register. They later found the cash register, plugged it in and it started humming.

The register worked as Mike plugged in numbers and they added up correctly. He couldn’t find a “total” button to open the register so he kept hitting buttons until the register finally opened.

The Ruhlands share Roger’s sentiments that he voiced in the 1984 Dispatch story:

“Me and Helen aren’t here for the business or money but for the way of life. … who spent so many years dedicated to their guests and friends, like Roger’s obligation to his guests.

Mike shared an ironic story. When they closed on the property, they were asked if

He found $7.22. He took the money out, closed the drawer, and the machine died.

“Right then we felt Roger knew what we were going to do with this property before we knew, and he wanted us to open the register,” Mike said.

That $7 and odd change is now in one of Roger’s little glass cups on a shelf in the bar, never to be touched.

“I feel that that is Roger’s money. It’s up on the bar and it’s for no one else to take. A great remembrance of good times at Rainbow Bay,” Mike said.

It has been an exciting journey discovering and preserving the past, and the Ruhlands look forward to creating their own history for their future generations to discover.

Nancy Vogt is editor of the Pineandlakes Echo Journal weekly newspaper in Pequot Lakes/Pine River. She may be reached at 218-855-5877 or nancy.vogt@pineandlakes.com.