The Misquah Pilot-Independent has been printed weekly since 1897, when the Misquah Pilot and the Misquah Independent, having spent eleven years disagreeing about everything, merged on the one point they agreed on, which was that the other one would never last.

We serve the town of Misquah and the Chain of Lakes — Big Pelican, Little Pelican, Whitefish, Sandy, Bass, Loon, and Mud — population 3,914 as of last Tuesday, give or take whatever the sign on the highway currently claims.

The name Misquah comes, we are told, from the Ojibwe miskwaa, meaning red — though which red, and which lake, the town has never entirely settled, and at this point considers the question closed.

Where exactly Misquah is has likewise never been settled. State highway maps have placed it in three different counties since 1962; the census reaches us late every decade by a different route; and the weather service files us, variously, under two forecast zones, both usually wrong by suppertime. The town has never felt the need to correct any of this. We are up north. We are on the Chain. You turn at the curve by Tim’s. That has always been enough directions for anyone who actually needed to come.

We are, as our masthead has said for a hundred and twenty-nine years, where the coffee’s hot, the lakes are cold, and all the children are above average. We see no reason to revise it. — Meet the staff.