Photo courtesy of Trygg Land Office, P.O. Box 628, Ely, MN
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Ely Residents Untangle Trygg Family Trove Documenting State’s Natural Heritage
By Ryan Rodgers
ELY – Bill Trygg Sr.’s quest began in earnest in the 1950s. The answers he sought had been felled, floated, and milled decades before. The answers were both evocative of a lost America and painstakingly quantifiable, having been stripped from the wilds in question and trundled south, killed to serve as wooden bones for the booming American civilization.
Millions of dollars for Native American tribes rode on Trygg’s answers, which he doggedly pursued for 15 years, until 1971, when he died of a heart attack on a trip to Washington D.C. to testify before the Indian Claims Commission. Back home in Ely at the Trygg Land Office, Bill Sr.’s thousands of documents of original research would sit untouched for the next 40 years.
Two generations later Trygg’s granddaughter Kris Kidd is on a mission to preserve her family legacy.
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