Sam Cohodas Lodge / Sam Cohodas

This lodge, built for Russian immigrant Sam Cohodas, symbolizes the Upper Peninsula’s ethnic diversity. Finnish craftsmen erected this massive lodge in 1934, according to plans by local architect and Swedish immigrant David Anderson. The rustic log lodge is built of materials gathered within a fifteen-mile radius of this site. Cohodas was one of the nation’s leading fruit wholesalers. The Sam Cohodas Lodge was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Sam Cohodas In 1903 Sam Cohodas (1895-1988) and his family left present-day Byelorussia, U.S.S.R., joining his father, who had come to Marinette, Wisconsin, in 1900. Like many Jews, the Cohodases fled the eastern European pogroms. Cohodas, his father and brothers worked in an uncle’s produce business. In 1915 Sam and his brother Harry began their own retail and wholesale company in Michigan’s Copper Country. Under Sam’s direction, the business boomed nationally. This lodge, erected in 1934, served as his wilderness camp from 1935 to 1972.