A history of Bena,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Bena from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗A post office called Bena has been in operation since 1898. Bena is a type of bird mentioned in the poem The Song of Hiawatha. The Ojibwe word bina' is the word for partridge, a very common bird in this area.
Both the Big Fish Supper Club and the Big Winnie General Store are landmarks associated with the city of Bena.
From 1901-1911, the Bena Boarding School, an American Indian residential school, operated in Bena. Hundreds of Native American students were brought to the school.
Late in World War II, a logging camp manned by prisoners of war was located at the site of an old CCC camp near Bena. Two German POWs escaped from the camp in 1944 for a short period.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Bena’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewBig Fish Supper Club, 1980: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Bena
See all 1 →Bena, decade by decade
1990s
1 historic place in Bena
1 place in Bena is on the National Register of Historic Places, the country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
Where they are
When they were listed
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Big Fish Supper Club (1980) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (6). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.