Extraordinary People: The 'Root Beer Lady' of the Wilderness

Alright, welcome to my new series, extraordinary people, where I break down the lives of some people that I find to be inspiring to share their stories and what we could learn from them. I'm Evan, your resident mental health and addiction therapist, and I find this person to be fascinating. She comes from my backyard. Her name is Dorothy Moulter, and she's also known as the root beer lady. Now, Dorothy was born in 1907 in an area outside Chicago, pretty similar to where I grew up. And I believe it was on a summer adventure doing a camp up in northern Minnesota in an area known as the Boundary Waters, which is on the border of Canada and the US, and it's millions of square miles of untouched, uninhabited wilderness.

Now, Dorothy absolutely fell in love with this area and decided to move there. In the 1930s, she became the last non indigenous resident to ever live there. She moved to the remote knife lake. The only way to get there is by canoe, and you have to often hop from lake to lake, portaging between them with hundreds of pounds of gear, which she would do with general ease. People would watch her do this, this older woman, and be absolutely blown away because some of these younger men couldn't even do what she did.

Over time, her muscles built, but also her ability to survive in this remote land that often has harsh winters with negative 1020 weather. She was able to survive in isolation and flourished. Initially, her home was part of a resort, and when the owner died, she took it over. She became trained as a nurse and helped people in this remote area survive because it was extremely dangerous if anything happened to you. And therefore, she started to become a legend, not only for how she took care of people in the area, but making root beer.

Now, Dorothy started making root beer as a hobby, making it for herself. However, she would share it and sell it to people who would come to the boundary waters for an adventure. And soon she became well known for it, but also her ability to help other people. And the legend grew and people just wanted to go visit her. Now, in order to survive in this absolute remote and often unforgiving land, she would have to transport hundreds of pounds of supplies to make her root beer and to also feed her beloved ducks.

As her popularity grew, thousands of people went and visited her every year to sign her guest book to see the beautiful flowers she grew on her land and most importantly, drink her root beer. Dorothy is an inspirational woman. We could all learn from the power of her resiliency, her ability to help others and to live this simple, quiet life in nature and be able to be happy in and of herself now. Dorothy passed away in 1986, the year I was born. She was 79 years old and went out the way that she wanted to on the land that she loved.

She inspired so many people. They even brought her home and transported it to the nearby town of Ely, where many people start their journey to the boundary waters, which I got to be able to do a canoe trip for the first time two years ago. And that's where I learned about her story. I got to go to her home that is now a museum, and it was such a fascinating place to visit. So I wanted to share this story with you all. Our channel.