The historic mailing at the post office by Story Scouts, by Anne Brataas. 

From Minnesota Children's Press - August 29, 2025

The world’s first and only free and screen-free public letter writing park–Grand Marais’ Letteracy Deck on Lake Superior, www.letteracydeck.org– set a new record going into the Labor Day weekend, reaching 6,211 letters and cards since June 12, 2025.

Letteracy Deck’s goal is to engage visitors and residents to mail an additional 1,800, reaching a total volume of 8,000 by October 20, 2025. This goal is twice the 4,000 total mailings reached in each of its previous two years between June 15 and October 15. Letteracy Deck has two locations in downtown Grand Marais. One is at the Lake Superior Trading Post overlooking the Lake Superior Harbor. The other is at the Cook County History Museum, on the back deck overlooking Lake Superior’s east bay, as well as inside the Museum’s maritime exhibit room. At least one location is open every day, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the Trading Post deck offering extended sunset writing hours until dusk.

Every Letter a Love Letter

“This response is so gratifying because it suggests we’re meeting a need people are feeling to ‘beauty bathe’—to focus on the natural beauty of Lake Superior as they reflect and connect through hand-written and hand-drawn cards and letters,” says Anne Brataas, executive director and chief curiosity officer of Minnesota Children’s Press, the Grand Marais-based 501(c)(3) non-profit that created Letteracy Deck.

 “It still amazes me how happy this simple activity makes people. It tells me people are deeply craving an embodied, positive experience they can do together–no screens, no AI or bots–at no cost. Toddlers to 100-year-olds can do this and feel good about it,” Brataas says. “And they should. Every letter is a love letter, really. We mail 75 to 200 a day from Grand Marais, and that positive energy put into the world at this moment in history is sorely needed. Perhaps this is where and how world healing starts: with one kind, loving, hand-rendered message mailed out into the world at a time; by sharing what is real, true and beautiful.”

Generous Donors

Letteracy Deck started in response to a call for innovative place-making grant proposals from the Blandin Foundation of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2023, intended to boost rural tourism. Generous grants from individuals, philanthropies, and service organizations, such as the Grand Marais Lions Club, also support Letteracy Deck. With 2024 funding from an Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation (IRRR) grant, Letteracy Deck expanded to create an indoor site inside the Cook County History Museum.

A Kindness Commons & Campaign

Minnesota Children’s Press conceived of Letteracy Deck as a letter-writing park that functions as a kindness commons, and like all parks, it is a space in which to renew mind, body, and spirit through natural beauty and the invitation to dwell in it.

“Parks have historically functioned to renew, relieve, re-create the human spirit,” Brataas says. “In Letteracy Deck, we’re creating a new kind of tourist attraction that is also a community enhancement based on recreational correspondence. We view Letteracy Deck as an act of radical hospitality by welcoming people to Grand Marais and giving them a seat at the best view of the lake, for free, and then provisioning them with everything they need to share it creatively by writing and drawing letters and postcards by hand. There are no machines or screens between them and their messages.”

The project goal is clear and compelling to Brataas: “We really mail happiness. Every letter or postcard is positive. Most say ‘I love you,’ or  ‘Thank you!’ or ‘It’s so beautiful here!’ Given that, we want to mail affirmations and tender sentiments to as many people as possible in a visitor-driven mass-mailing kindness campaign from June 12 to October 20, 2025.” 

She expects to reach the goal of mailing 8,000 cards and letters by then—and quite likely more. 

“Reaching the 6,000 letters mark halfway through our season, with two months remaining, means Grand Marais tourists are writing at twice the previous rate in half the time—which is both gratifying and simply stunning,” says Brataas.