Crystal Falls resort owner Stewart Warmboe dies at 85
Crystal Falls resort owner Stewart Warmboe, who ran Way Dam Resort for two decades, died at 85 after a life shaped by mines, ore boats and Northwoods work.
Stewart Olson Warmboe, who turned Way Dam Resort into a familiar stop on the Michigamme Reservoir for two decades, died Saturday, May 2, at 85, surrounded by his family. His life stretched from Duluth to the Northwoods and across the Great Lakes, but it ended in the same Iron County landscape that defined much of his working life.
Born April 21, 1941, to Lloyd and Anna (Vick) Warmboe, he graduated from Floodwood High School in 1959 and then moved through a string of hard jobs that carried him across the Upper Midwest and beyond. He worked on the docks in Seattle, labored in mines in Minnesota and Michigan, cooked on ore boats on the Great Lakes, logged with Belgian work horses and boxed on the West Coast in his younger years.
Warmboe later became part of the local hospitality scene. He owned and operated The Sagola Clubhouse from 1968 to 1983, then Stewart’s Way Dam Resort from 1983 to 2003. The Sagola Clubhouse itself had deeper roots in the area, erected in the early 1920s on the site of Mayotte’s Saloon and once serving as a community center with a pool room, card room and dairy bar.
Way Dam Resort sits on the Michigamme Reservoir in Crystal Falls, a body of water created in 1941 when Wisconsin Electric, now WE Energies, built Way Dam and formed the 7,000-acre reservoir. The resort operates year-round and offers swimming, boating, fishing, hunting and ice fishing, a mix that matches the seasonal rhythm of Iron County recreation and helps explain why Warmboe’s name stayed tied to the place long after he stopped running it.
One condolence on the obituary guestbook recalled a family vacation at Way Dam Resort in the 1990s and remembered Warmboe’s breakfast, fishing tips and friendliness. Family and friends gathered Saturday, May 23, from 1 to 3 p.m. at Nash Funeral Home in Crystal Falls, with a service to follow. Rev. D.J. Rasner officiated, and burial was in Channing Cemetery. For Iron County, Warmboe left behind a rare blend of work, travel and rootedness, with his life measured as much by the places he knew as by the miles he covered.
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