OTTERTRACK LAKE, Minn. -- Benny Ambrose became a legend during the nearly half a century he spent living in the isolated Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Minnesota.
Thursday that legend faded into the past as Ambrose's ashes were strewn about the remote area he called home before his death late last week.
Bruce Kerfoot, a Grand Marais native, said Ambrose 'was the kind of guy who at 40 degrees below zero would come out of the woods with his wool shirt unbuttoned down to the waist. He was as rough and tough as they come.'
Ambrose, 82, was one of the last two people permitted by the government to live permanently in the wilderness area in the far northeastern portion of the state.
He apparently died of a heart attack in his primitive cabin on Ottertrack Lake, within 46 miles of Canada. Ambrose had been a resident of the area since the end of World War I.
He was born in Waukon, Iowa, and became famous for his rose garden and the fruits and vegetables he raised in the rocky soil of the north.
'Work didn't matter to him,' said Bob Jacobsen, a retired state conservation officer. 'If he wanted something done he'd do it. He hauled that dirt in there in canoes and backpacks.'
Ambrose was married to a Grand Marais woman and the couple had two daughters, Holly Landmesser, Anchorage, Alaska, and Bonnie Wasmund, who lives near Washington, D.C.
His wife left him in 1954 when Ambrose refused to desert the woods. Ambrose's children arranged his memorial service.
When Ottertrack Lake became part of the Boundary Waters, it looked at first as though Ambrose might be forced to leave. But the late Hubert Humphrey intervened to assure that Ambrose could remain in the woods.
One other person, Dorothy Molter, 75, of Knife Lake, was also permitted to remain in the area. Miss Molter still lives alone in a log cabin with no electricity, no running water and wood burning stoves for which she chops her own wood.
A 1972 federal law designated Miss Molter and Ambrose special volunteers to help in BWCA emergencies.
Kerfoot said the death of Ambrose would mean 'another missing link' in the chain' of colorful characters that have lived in the wilderness area over the years. 'We feel each breaking piece a little bit more,' he said, 'where the rest of the world won't care.'
