Joan Herman describes her upbringing in Marble, Minn., a tiny town about a 20-minute drive from Grand Rapids, as idyllic.
And now, as she’s listing the $4.75 million dream home she built nearby in Bovey, someone else can experience the community of the Iron Range.
“We were all friendly and helpful to one another,” Herman said.
Herman’s father was an electrician, and most of her neighbors worked in the iron ore mines. As a teenager, she was a lifeguard at the Twin Lake town beach. There, she’d often challenge herself to swimming across to the other side, where there were hundreds of acres of old-growth woods that U.S. Steel owned.
“In the summer, my friends and I would camp there overnight. And in the winter, my dad would tie a rope to the bumper of his car and tow us over on our toboggan so we could sled all afternoon,” she said.
Herman moved away after high school but never lost touch with her hometown. And in 1985, when U.S. Steel decided to sell a 64.9-acre parcel with the toboggan hill and the point facing her old lifeguard chair, Herman purchased it. She thought she’d build her dream house there one day, but in the meantime, her parents could put their pop-up camper on the point and enjoy the lake.
Fast forward to 2014, when she decided the time had come to build that house. The project helped Herman through the grief of losing her husband and parents within a couple of years of each other.
She brought in a trailer and a Porta Potty and spent months living on the land during the three years it took to design and build her home. Being on-site was helpful when the contractors had questions, and Herman also took the time to clean up the forest floor. She hired teenagers from town to help collect and chip fallen branches.
