Larsmont seeks help finding missing bell from Little Red Schoolhouse
A nearly 200-pound cast bell has vanished from Larsmont’s Little Red Schoolhouse, and the loss has the community asking who last had access.
A nearly 200-pound cast bell has disappeared from the Larsmont Little Red Schoolhouse, leaving one of Lake County’s most visible community landmarks without an object that had come to symbolize welcome, memory and stewardship.
The bell was noticed missing after the Larsmont Community Club’s annual meeting on May 5, and the surrounding grounds were searched without success. Bill Tranah reported the loss to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, May 11. The club is now asking anyone who knows where the bell went to contact the sheriff or the Larsmont Community Club.
The bell was not housed in a tower. Because the Little Red Schoolhouse is protected as a historic site, the community club had previously been denied permission to build one, so volunteers instead created a display stand near the memorial garden. That garden was added around 2020 to honor the people who built and preserved the Larsmont community, making the bell part of a broader effort to present the site’s history in public view.
The loss carries extra weight because the schoolhouse itself has spent more than a century as a civic anchor on its original 1914 site along Scenic 61, about five miles southwest of Two Harbors. Built in 1914, the school opened with 12 students, served the railroad community for about 20 years, and closed as a school in 1934 before students were consolidated into Two Harbors. In June 1934, it was sold to the community for use as a church, later housed the Larsmont Gospel Mission Society in the 1940s, and was transferred to the Larsmont Fire Department in 1959 before becoming the community center that stands today.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, a recognition that underscores why its surviving artifacts matter. The schoolhouse was originally white with dark trim before it was painted red later in its life, and the red exterior has helped make it one of the most recognizable stops on the North Shore. Larsmont itself took its name in 1914 from an early settler with roots in Larsmo, Finland.
Tranah said the bell had also become part of a familiar Grandma’s Marathon tradition, when children would ring it to greet runners passing through Larsmont on the route from Two Harbors to Duluth. With the bell gone, the community has lost more than metal; it has lost a piece of how Larsmont presents its past, marks its place on the North Shore, and protects the landmarks that hold that story together.
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