Original Palo Homestead

The Palo homestead has been in the family since 1908 when Finnish immigrant John Palo (Palomaki) bought the logged-over property. In 1917, after a few years working in the copper mines in Arizona, John and his wife Justina “Tini” Pollari, also an immigrant from Finland, moved back to Oulu where they would then raise their three children and begin building this farm.

After his death in 1949, his widow Tini who was affectionately known as “Äiti” which is “mother” in Finnish, lived alone in this simple log home without indoor plumbing and with only wood heat.

The farm would remain vacant for 26 years following her death until 1997 when grandson Duane Lahti purchased the property and began the ambitious family project of restoring the buildings. The farm restoration work brought the deteriorated farm buildings back to life and earned state and national recognition in the process. The home is an authentic reflection of life as it was for this early settler family. Today, the homestead reveals little of the years of neglect. Instead it provides a journey back to rural life as it was at the turn of the last century.

As a result, it stimulated enthusiasm for developing the Oulu Cultural and Heritage Center to preserve the unique history of this immigrant community

pudas house

Built in 1899, the Pudas house had a long and storied history at its original location in section nine of the Oulu township.

While under construction, a tornado picked up the house and set it down eight feet from its original site. Left totally intact, the house would stay at the new location—with a new foundation—because the deeply religious John Pudas believed that “God meant it to be there!”

Throughout the years as the Pudas home, and as one of the largest buildings in early Oulu, it became the site of community events, church services, and temporary lodging for travelers. As the years passed, the old log house slowly deteriorated and appeared to be beyond repair.

However, in 2011 the Duane Lahti family along with Dan and Harry Pudas and their crew at Oulu Log Builders began the tedious job of dismantling the dilapidated structure and moving the house and the logs over six miles to their new home at the Palo Homestead to become a central part of the Oulu Heritage Center.

Savu Sauna

Cleanliness has always been an important part of Finnish culture, so in the days before indoor plumbing the sauna played an important role in life in Oulu.

Many of the earliest settlers had savu saunas similar to this one originally built on the former Korhonen farm in the neighboring town of Waino and donated by the Dennis Smet family.

In this primarily Finnish community, the sauna was likely to be the first building built at the homestead site and was the primary source of family hygiene, the place for birth of babies and caring for the sick, and “delousing the spouse” after months at the logging camps.

This style of sauna was commonly used by local residents for their Saturday night saunas until indoor plumbing became more readily available in the late 50s and early 60s.

Today many families still enjoy the special therapy and warmth of these wood-fired saunas.

FINNISH PROVERB: The sauna is a poor man’s drugstore.

Northern Coop Store

Cooperatives were an important way of doing business in early Oulu and other Finnish communities. The first Oulu Cooperative was a creamery that had been organized in 1910 and became a way for local farmers to market their dairy products. It was built on property that would later also be the site of the Oulu Branch of the Farmers Cooperative Mercantile Association.

Other cooperatives that were organized to provide services to the area included the Waino-Oulu Telephone Association which was organized in 1913 and the Rural Electric Cooperative organized in 1945 which still provides electricity to this area, including the Heritage Center/Palo Homestead grounds.

The Northern Cooperative operated from 1931 to 1957. However, for the past half-century, the store building has provided storage for a wide range of items but has now come back to life on the Oulu Heritage grounds where it will house Cooperative exhibits and will be used for retail and other purposes during Center events.

fairview schoolhouse

Education was an important priority for Oulu’s early settlers. Oulu was home to fifteen different one and two room schools between 1891 and 1949. From 1918-35, there were seven schools operating at one time in Oulu.

Meanwhile, in the neighboring town of Tripp the Kopplin Lumber Company built the Fairview School at a cost of $600-$700 to accommodate their increasing number of children. It was also known as the Tripp District School #2 and was one of three schoolhouses in the town of Tripp.

While a one-room school had been a priority planned exhibit at the Oulu Heritage Center, the success of the Center’s summer school program increased the need for a functioning school.

Summer school, which is jointly sponsored through the South Shore School District began in 2014 as a week-long student experience about local history and was extended to two weeks the following year, and in 2016 yet another week was added to provide a writing experience for students.

Aho House

The Aho House was an original pioneer home built on a farm in Maple, Wisconsin. The home was built by John and Johanna Aho in the early 1890s.

In 2017 the building was donated to the Center by Donald and Jeanette Rantala and was moved from its location on Highway F in Maple, Wisconsin to the Oulu Cultural & Heritage Center.

Renovation on the home began in the summer of 2018 and continues into the summer of 2021.

It is anticipated the home will become the Welcome Center for the site and in the future will become the gift shop which is currently housed in the Pudas House.