Power in The Wilderness

Karl and Aaron narrate the end of the series with a surprising discovery. Victor Power returns from a long Alaskan expedition in good spirits, only to find his village in political chaos. Mayor John Gannon tried to negotiate with U.S. Steel over the move of the remaining portion of North Hibbing, only for the company to undercut his ideas and leave the village broke. Power returns to power, but not for long. His coalition is shattered by changing political conditions. With fewer friends than before, he tries to run for Congress but a scandal derails his hopes of ever achieving higher office. Alone at his farmhouse on the edge of Hibbing, Victor Power dies one night, leaving a lasting legacy, an unsolved mystery, and … a secret wife?

Victor Power’s deal with Michael Godfrey creates a new village in South Hibbing. A new city hall and school are on the way, along with an unparalleled downtown business district for a town of this size. But the political unity that marked Power’s rise to prominence is breaking apart. Some residents lose out when the village moves south, while young men with no memory of Power’s triumphs seek new leadership. Amid all of this, Power reels from the early death of his wife Percy. In this stew of discontent, a lawyer named John Gannon rises from obscurity. Gannon makes a name defending a township official accused of murdering two immigrant bootleggers. The case exposes a growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the village and the chaotic influence of prohibition on local culture. Since Power’s coalition was founded by immigrants and saloon keepers this puts him in a tough spot. As a “bigger, better Hibbing” takes shape, Power faces the greatest political challenge of his life and, for the first time, he loses. A new mayor tries a new kinder, gentler approach with U.S. Steel while Victor Power licks his wounds and heads to Alaska.

Weary from the tax fight, the strike, and the graft trials, Victor Power hopes that 1917 is the year he returns to building his vision for Hibbing and a future campaign for governor. A new superintendent of the Oliver Iron Mining Company in Hibbing, Michael Godfrey, decides to change tactics, befriending Power instead of fighting him. As the United States enters World War I Vic Power becomes Captain America, a patriotic wartime leader who turns Hibbing into a powerhouse of military enlistment, war bond sales, and iron ore production. While the war changes the lives of the young men and women caught up in its horrors, the very ground beneath Hibbing starts to shift. U.S. Steel begins buying up property in the northern section of the village to access rich iron ore deposits beneath the primary business district, including Vic Power’s law office, his brother Walter’s famous theater, and his sister-in-law Dottie’s beloved department store. With much at stake, Vic Power makes a deal that changes Hibbing forever.

Peace between Power and U.S. Steel doesn’t last long. As European war demand raises the price of steel, the value of iron ore in the land around Hibbing rises with it. As it does, miners decide they deserve better than poverty wages. When they went on strike in 1916 it became the biggest labor uprising in Iron Range history. Here, Mayor Power tries to maintain the rights of striking workers by banning the company police force from patrolling the streets of Hibbing, a move that likely saved lives. However, the strike becomes much bigger than just Power or Hibbing. As regional violence intensifies, Power receives an enormous blow from the mining companies. He and his entire administration, along with prominent supporters from Hibbing’s business community, are charged with graft by the administration of Governor J.A.A. Burnquist, a man who would become Power’s greatest rival in his quest for statewide office. Power would successfully defend himself and all his friends, but not before paying a great political price.

Hibbing’s population is exploding faster than the mine blasts on the edge of town. Vic’s policies prove hugely popular and the town prospers. However, the world is changing. Half the people in Hibbing come from Europe where the first World War just broke out. The demand for steel is about to skyrocket which means the pressure from the mining companies is about to ramp up. But Vic continues to beat U.S. Steel in the courtroom and at the ballot box. He easily defeats a mining company candidate in his first contested bid for re-election. Then the mines try to cap the village’s taxing power through a bill at the state legislature. Power gathers a force of Hibbing citizens to counteract the sophisticated lobbying operation of U.S. Steel at the state capitol. The people rejoice, throwing an enormous midnight parade for “the Little Giant.” Then the mining companies take their boldest action yet: they refuse to pay taxes to the Village of Hibbing, again citing extravagant spending. Somehow Victor Power and Hibbing endure months of economic sanctions by using village IOUs as a makeshift currency. In the end, Hibbing wins the fight, but Power sees the edges of what is possible in the face of overwhelming corporate strength.

Victor Power quickly implements the most ambitious slate of public improvements in the history of Hibbing, unprecedented for a village of this size anywhere in the United States. He does this by doing the one thing that the Oliver Iron Mining Company can’t stand: raising taxes. Streets get paved and bright, beautiful new lights are installed. New sanitary sewers and water lines snake under the village, improving public health, while spectacular new public parks welcome all of Hibbing’s citizens, rich or poor. Power says he’s not being extravagant; he’s just making up for the years the mines wouldn’t allow Hibbing to grow. But the mines form a new lobbying organization, the Lake Superior Taxpayers Association, which seeks to control men like Victor Power and villages like Hibbing through the state legislature. Power bests the mines during his first year in office, but his success invites the fight of his life as the world’s largest corporation plans its revenge.

Victor Power is now the Mayor of Hibbing, but his first action surprises many. Vic follows former Mayor Weirick to a posh resort in French Lick Springs, Indiana, for a private one-on-one meeting. Power’s working vacation allows his friends to vet candidates for a new administration. With Vic at the helm, this new government aims to develop this wild town with the tax dollars of the mining companies, whether the companies like it or not. We meet the members of Vic’s inner circle, a hodge-podge of characters with relatively little experience running a town, certainly not a small village with an enormous amount of money about to enter its coffers. Power’s task is complicated by the fact that U.S. Steel employs informants to trail local officials and embed themselves inside any organization that could pose trouble for the company. But Vic has his eyes on a big prize: an independent Hibbing that attracts people and businesses from all over the country, one that will endure longer than the mines.

Aaron and Karl learn just how hard it is to track a man who’s been dead for almost a century. Fresh off a stunning legal victory over U.S. Steel, Victor Power the young lawyer becomes Victor Power the crafty political leader. Using deft strategy, brilliant oratory, and a keen sense of timing, Power barges into the municipal election and upsets the longest serving mayor of Hibbing to that point, Dr. H.R. Weirick, an acolyte of the Oliver Iron Mining Company. But he didn’t do it by himself. Power’s Progressive Party ticket was elevated by immigrants and merchants who had grown tired of company rule and wanted improvements to this rough and rowdy mining village in the middle of nowhere. Vic also had his sister-in-law, Dottie Power, who quietly became a groundbreaking progressive leader and businesswoman in her own right. In just a few days Vic Power started a revolution in Hibbing that would reverberate all the way to corporate headquarters in New York. A new philosophy ruled Hibbing, one that led to a catchy saying, “If Vic Power has a pig, everyone in town gets a ham sandwich.”

What will Victor Power do next? Beaming, yet cautious after an “impossible” victory defending an immigrant miner against a murder charge for winning a pistol duel, Now “Fightin’ Vic” confronts the massive corporation that rules the small village of Hibbing, Minnesota. We begin this episode in an unexpected place: Mexico. We end with explosions, animals attacking humans, and the rise of Victor Power. First, we join a thrilling 1910 car chase in which Vic, his brother Walter, and a business partner evade a posse of gun-toting horsemen in a 40-horsepower Mitchell automobile along the border of Arizona and Mexico. Ambition drives them, almost to ruin, but in the process they learn something that other people from Hibbing don’t know yet. You can’t run away from El Pulpo -- the Octopus -- of U.S. Steel. Victor returns to law practice in Hibbing while settling down with his new wife in a middle class home on Mahoning Street. He begins to make friends and forge new law business. One case becomes a turning point for the independence of Hibbing from mining company control.

Filmmaker Karl Jacob and author Aaron Brown take a road-trip-movie style journey through time to unlock the mystery of Bob Dylan’s hometown, and their hometown, Hibbing, Minnesota. They find a dynamic mayor named Victor Power who left few traces after his mysterious death almost a century ago. His political ghost still haunts an opulent, castle-like high school in the middle of the wilderness and reveals a story of America that has never been told before.