In 1917 an immigrant named Filber Isaacssen living in Montrose IA decided that he would build a raft made of logs that had washed up on his property along the Mississippi River. His goal was to lash all of his belongings to the log raft and make his way to Northern Minnesota in hopes of bettering his life by becoming a logger.
Known around Montrose as a "jack-of-all-trades' Filber worked day and night to fashion his dream raft. He used materials from his home in Iowa to make a sleeping and cooking area on the raft and in May 1918 he eagerly launched his new raft into the water. It promptly rolled over in the water and sank about three miles downstream of the launching point with all of his worldly possessions attached. It was then that Filber finally realized an important fact: The Mississippi River flows south and away from Minnesota, not toward it!
Filber Isaacssen never made it to Minnesota but after he died some of his relatives, knowing of Filber's dream, brought his ashes to Minnesota with the hope of casting them along the shores of the Mississippi River. But due to a series of bad navigational choices his relatives ended up in East Grand Forks MN and unwittingly placed his ashes into the Red River. All of them stood on the bank of the river and watched in amazement as they witnessed his ashes float North!
Today some of Filber's relatives still have dreams of rafting north on the Mighty Mississippi river. This cache has been placed as a tribute to Filber's undying stupidity and his family's complete lack of navigational skills that help keep that dream alive.
