Fourmile Idiots mark 50 years of Memorial Day tradition at Fourmile Lake

Fourmile Lake has become a kind of annual checkpoint for a Silver Bay friendship that outlasted jobs, families and the ordinary drift of adult life. The Fourmile Idiots, a fishing and camping group from the William Kelley High School Class of 1976, marked their 50th Memorial Day weekend outing in 2026, with nine of the original classmates still making the trip.

The ritual began with a simple idea after the first outing: go back next year. They did, and then again and again, building a tradition that now says as much about Silver Bay as any civic anniversary or school reunion. For a town that has spent decades navigating turnover, distance and the pull of work elsewhere, the group’s staying power is its own kind of local institution.

Silver Bay itself was incorporated in 1956, making 2026 its 70th year as an incorporated city. The community, originally built by Reserve Mining Company for employees at its taconite processing plant, now has about 1,850 residents and sits roughly 56 miles northeast of Duluth on U.S. Highway 61. That setting helps explain why informal ties still matter so much here: in a small North Shore city, friendships often do the work that larger places assign to institutions.

The Fourmile Lake gathering has also adapted without losing its core. The breakfast pancake duty, once handled with a griddle and gloves over a wood fire, has shifted to a Blackstone flat-top. The change is minor, but it captures the spirit of the group’s half-century run: the gear evolves, the ritual remains.

Wade LeBlanc, now mayor of Silver Bay, is part of the circle too, even though he joined years later. That detail matters because it shows how the tradition reached beyond one graduating class and became part of the wider social fabric around it. Lenny Moe and Swede Larson both pointed to the same larger truth in different ways: the value of the trip is not the catch, but the chance to keep seeing people who have known each other since they were young.

The place itself supports that rhythm. Fourmile Lake Rustic Campground in the Superior National Forest has four drive-in sites and two backcountry campsites accessible by boat, along with a boat ramp, dock and trailer parking. There is no garbage pickup, so visitors must pack out all trash, including fish remains. The campground’s practical layout fits a group that returns by the calendar, ready to fish, cook and sleep near the same lake year after year.

That endurance connects to another Silver Bay marker of continuity: the William M. Kelley Alumni Association, founded in 2011 by graduates who wanted to give back. From the school to the lake, the town’s strongest links have often been the ones people choose to keep. In a place shaped by the North Shore landscape and by generations who stayed in touch after graduation, the Fourmile Idiots have made fellowship look like a civic tradition.