Moosylvania and the campaign of '62

Warroad dentist leased Lake of the Woods island to Bullwinkle producer

Map of Moosylvania. Courtesy of Warroad Heritage Center

Last month I reported finding episodes of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon featuring Mooslyvania. I’d learned that in the summer of 1962, Jay Ward, the creator and producer of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, had sent his film editor, Skip Craig — originally from Minnesota — to buy an island in the Lake of the Woods. Was there a Warroad connection to the imaginary island of Moosylvania?

Fortunately, Brady Swanson at the Warroad Heritage Center had the answer. He had a file folder of newspaper clippings and some fun memorabilia for me to look at when I visited this past week.

“I was sitting in my office minding my own business one day last summer,” John Larson, a Warroad dentist, told a Grand Forks Herald reporter in October 1962, “when two strangers walked in and asked if I owned an island out in Lake of the Woods. I replied in the affirmative, and they asked to buy it. I said no. They argued. Finally they told me what it was all about.”

Envelope addressed to John Larson; courtesy of Warroad Heritage Center

Jay Ward had come up with a new storyline about Moosylvania, an uninhabited island with man-eating mosquitoes on the border between Canada and Minnesota. Bullwinkle would be the only citizen and a permanent non-resident. The actual boundaries of Moosylvania remained unclear because “surveyors keep getting swallowed up by quicksand.”

Skip Craig had driven up from Detroit Lakes to Lake of the Woods with his uncle, a retired mailman, and they went to the Roseau County courthouse to look at plat maps to find out who owned islands in Lake of the Woods. There were hundreds on the Canadian side of the border, but only a few on the American side. It didn’t take long for them to find John Larson in Warroad.

Dr. Larson first opened his dental practice in Warroad in 1946 when he returned from his service in the US Navy. Craig appealed to John Larson’s sense of humor. Larson agreed to a three-year lease of his island for $1,500.

I had met his daughter, “Babs” Larson, before she retired as librarian at the Warroad Public Library in 2015. I remember speaking with her about her father and learning he had been quite an antiques collector and wood carver. She recently donated a number of items to the Warroad Heritage Center, including Moosylvania memorabilia.

When Craig returned to Hollywood, Ward launched a national marketing campaign in October of 1962 to make Moosylvania the 52nd state. Alaska and Hawaii had only become the 49th and 50th states in 1959. Reportedly, the members of the Moosylvania for Statehood Committee reserved the 51st state for Puerto Rico. Though Ward also suggested three weeks after James Meredith became the first Black student enrolled at the University of Mississippi, that the state of Mississippi might want to join the Union first.

Supporters of the cause for Moosylvania for 52nd state would march on Washington chanting “A Full Deck for Uncle Sam!”

Bumper sticker. Courtesy of Warroad Heritage Center

In October of 1962, Jay Ward and Howard Brand, his publicity director, set out on a cross-country tour in an Econoline van with “Moosylvania for Statehood” painted on the sides. The two of them created a spectacle — some said a nuisance — wherever they stopped, garnering news coverage and collecting signatures for their petition for Mooslyvania statehood. They intended to deliver the petition to President Kennedy on November 8 at the White House.

Ward held press conferences in every city and explained to news reporters the new state of Moosyvania would have two houses to its legislature — one being condemned and the other up for sale. It would also use the two-party system. One party starts at nine, and the other at eleven-thirty.

Along their route, Jay Ward distributed a vinyl disc with the Moosylvania state song recorded “live at the Moosylvania Jazz Festival.” Their van had a loudspeaker on top that blared Moosylvania music. He sent one of the records to Dr. Larson in Warroad. You can listen to the entire album if you click here.

While Ward and Brand spent October 1962 on the road to the White House, U-2 spy planes were taking reconnaissance photographs of nuclear ballistic missiles in Cuba and sending them to DC. President Kennedy learned on October 16 that Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, had deployed them. Kennedy insisted the missiles be removed and Khrushchev refused. The nearly two-week nuclear standoff ended on October 28 when the Soviets agreed to withdraw their missiles from Cuba if the US withdrew theirs from Italy and Turkey along the Soviet border.

The timing for Moosylvania statehood could not have been any worse. White House security turned Ward and Brand away from 1600 West Pennsyvania Avenue on November 8.

Moosylvania may have been a casualty of the Cuban missile crisis, but there is no erasing from history that smile on Dr. Larson’s face on the front page of the Grand Forks Herald.