This strategically-placed building has been welcoming people to Lanesboro since 1872. Built by businessman-banker Michael Scanlan, it was the long-time home of the Thompson Brothers Furniture Store and Mortuary. You could buy beds, tables, and chairs here—caskets, too. An early store ad also promoted their “Ambulance Service and Licensed Embalmers.”

Olaf and Teman Thompson were the Thompson brothers. Olaf, a tall man with a booming voice, loved skiing. He organized the local Norse Ski Club and took advantage of his big voice as a popular announcer at ski-jump competitions in Minnesota, throughout the Midwest, and as far away as California.

The office of Dr. Frank (White Beaver) Powell, Lanesboro’s first doctor and a good friend of Buffalo Bill, was on the second floor here. Known for his own creative, even ground-breaking advertising, for “healing cremes,” and for his promise to quickly fix “any diseases of the eyes within minutes,” Dr. Powell performed an appendectomy on a Whalan farmer, one of the first operations of its kind in the state. Powell later became mayor of La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Fast-forward to the 1980s. Jack and Nancy Bratrud buy the property, renovate it, and by 1984 welcome the first guests to Mrs. B’s Bed-and-Breakfast, one of the first B-and-B’s in Minnesota. Guests enjoy delicious meals, including five-course dinners (and a memorable nightly amenity: “Mrs. B’s Bedtime Bump”). Word spreads about the B & B, and soon people who’d never heard of Lanesboro were making their way here. A century after Lanesboro’s start as a “tourist destination,” Mrs. B’s helped the town be just that.

Over the next decade Mrs. B’s (and other new lodgings), the Root River State Trail, a blossoming art-and-theater scene, and the beauty of bluff country fuel the town’s resurgence. This building—on the National Register of Historic Places—is once again a hotel, welcoming people to Lanesboro.