In Minnesota's dwindling mom-and-pop resort culture, Ten Mile Lake keeps it in the family

DALTON, Minn. – The legend of Ten Mile Lake Resort spans five generations and 120 years, and it starts like this:

Anthony Prohosky, who'd emigrated from Bohemia in the late 1800s at age 14, owned a hotel and bar in nearby Nashua. Way back in 1906, a man stayed at Prohosky's hotel, drank in his bar and ran up a substantial bill he couldn't pay.

The two struck a handshake deal. The man's bill was forgiven, and Prohosky purchased the man's resort, then just a few cottages on Ten Mile Lake in Otter Tail County.

So Prohosky and his wife raised their six children there, renaming the resort Camp Prohosky. The family business passed through generations: to Prohosky's daughter and her husband, Nellie and Fred Schultz, in 1921; to his grandsons, Bob and Jerry Schultz, in 1958; to his great-grandsons, Mike and Pat Schultz, in 1991; and finally, last year to Prohosky's great-great-granddaughter.

On a perfect recent summer evening, that great-great-granddaughter - Sydney Schultz, 32, her face already flecked by freckles from the early summer sun - strode through the wood-paneled lodge and greeted longtime patrons.

One family seated for dinner remembered when Schultz was a kid, biking around the campground all day, walking into people's campers like she owned the place. Now, as she held court in Ten Mile Lake Resort's historic lodge, she really did own the place.

In all its taxidermied glory, the lodge stands as a relic of a bygone Minnesota era.

Once upon a time, places like Ten Mile Lake Resort served as a backbone of Minnesota summer tourism. In the 1960s, the state boasted more than 3,000 lakeside resorts.

But time passed. Younger generations demanded more amenities. Some mom-and-pops didn't adapt. The financial realities of small resorts made less and less sense as profit margins shrank and lakeshore land values and property taxes skyrocketed.

Today, Minnesota's mom-and-pop resorts have become a rare breed. Minnesota now has fewer than 700 resorts, with mom-and-pops crowded out by larger, upscale resorts like Grand View Lodge in Nisswa, or Cragun's Resort on Gull Lake in Brainerd, or Ruttger's Bay Lake Resort in Deerwood.

Ten Mile Lake Resort keeps it simple: No golf course. No spa. Just 13 newly renovated cabins and 91 seasonal campsites for RVs and mobile homes on 30 lakeside acres. The main attraction, aside from the generations-long relationships built here, is Ten Mile Lake, named for being 10 miles from an old trading post.

"They cater to the occasionals," Linda Schultz, Sydney's mother, said of the big resorts. "We cater to the year after year after year, coming to the same cabin every year so they can have the same family next door."

The key to the resort's against-the-odds success story is in the continuity of family ownership that has cultivated it as one big family. When visitors finish their lake week this summer, they put down a deposit for the same week next summer.

That's why Ten Mile Lake Resort is believed to be the resort owned by a single family longer than any other Minnesota resort. Once you're in, you're hooked for life.

"We have grandparents who went here, then their kids, then their kids," Sydney Schultz said. "I grew up with these kids. And they're still coming back today, bringing their kids."

A resort centered on family

When they were young, Sydney Schultz and her cousin, Ben Schultz, would cook together in the resort's steakhouse. They'd have heart-to-hearts in the walk-in cooler, fantasizing about someday running the place themselves. (Ben Schultz is now the resort's general manager and a minority owner.)

"It's all I've ever known," Sydney Schultz said.

"Half of these people have known me my whole life," said Ben Schultz, whose four kids wash dishes and scoop ice cream at the resort.

Sydney even met her husband through the resort. At a Community of Minnesota Resorts conference, her parents met the owners of Cedar Point Resort near Grand Rapids. They happened to have a son who was single. The parents set up their kids.

"On our first date, I said, ‘I'll be moving to Fergus Falls and buying my parents' resort,' " Sydney said. "And he said, ‘Sounds good to me.' "

History colors the lodge: a black-and-white photo of men in swimsuits and women in ankle-length dresses, frolicking in the lake a century ago. A 1916 oil painting showing the old lakeside dance hall. A photo of nine men posing on May 27, 1956, with dozens of walleyes on a stringer. Portraits of Anthony and Anna Prohosky, he with the walrus mustache, she with the formal black dress with the stand-up collar, the forebears of this Minnesota tradition.

To survive through the generations, the resort has adapted.

Wi-Fi and cable television, once a luxury, are now a necessity. The restaurant used to be their biggest money-earner, open year-round. Now the steakhouse is only open seasonally, more of an amenity than a main attraction. (Still: Get the burger, get the salad with homemade blue cheese dressing, get the homemade cranberry butter, which Mike Schultz insists tastes great even on cardboard.)

The upfront costs, like property taxes and lakeshore land, are one reason why mom-and-pop resorts are disappearing. Another reason: It's an all-consuming time investment.

For three or four months a year, Sydney Schultz said, you must be available 24/7, responsible for the 500 people who may be staying at the resort at any one point. That's why her parents live a two-minute drive from the resort, and why she and her husband are still living in the Twin Cities suburbs as they wait for the perfect home to open up on the lake. They want to be just as close. Because you never know when emergency will strike, whether a burst pipe or a destructive storm.

Offseasons are consumed by repairs, renovations and improvements, not to mention getting snowed in by drifts reaching the roofline. Over the past two decades, the family has gutted and remodeled every cabin during the colder months. They've added water toys to the beach and installed a bocce ball court.

The work is exhausting: "Most days are good," said Mike Schultz, Sydney's dad and an expert handyman, "but by the end of summer, you're ready to get done."

But, the Schultzes say, it's all in service of keeping the resort a summer touchstone for generations of families.

‘It's tradition'

On a recent summer evening, the 2,099-acre lake shimmered in the evening sun amid nearby rows of corn. One family started a campfire. Another threw a tennis ball off their dock, and a golden retriever dove in after it.

Chris Van Horn and his brother Mike, country boys from Missouri in cowboy hats and overalls, dipped chunks of the day's catch (walleyes, mostly) into the fryer to feed dozens of relatives. They sipped Hamm's and toasted each other with blackberry Crown Royal.

Their family has come here the same week in June since 1953.

"It's tradition, a great family tradition," Chris Van Horn said.

The Schultz family planned to celebrate the resort's 120th anniversary on July 4th with a carnival theme, a golf cart parade and a food stand with brisket.

They wanted the place to be shipshape for the celebration. Mike Schultz recently built a sauna. He spent this offseason building a massive pirate ship-themed playground. He climbed up to the playground's crow's nest and waved to those below.

Loons wailed far out on the lake, not far from a pontoon. The water lapped up against the pencil reeds in a marshy spot near the shore. The sun dipped low.

"We have the best sunset in the whole wide world," Linda Schultz sighed.

She hugged a man, Curt Eide, who has been visiting for nearly half a century.

"This," Eide said, "is the greatest resort in the world. Because it's family."

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