Buffalo House Restaurant

A fibreglass buffalo a few miles outside Duluth was named after a real one. Burko the Second stood at the Buffalo House restaurant, bar and campground on Guss Road, in the Esko area, when the News Tribune profiled it in 2023. The business says founder George Stoyanoff bought the land, now called Buffalo Valley, in 1958, built the Buffalo House with family and friends in 1968 and opened it in 1972.

According to the Duluth News Tribune in 2023, the statue was 11 feet tall and weighed 2 tons, although a photo caption in the same article gives 1.5 tons. A tag shows it was made in Sparta, Wisconsin. Stoyanoff told the paper in 1997 that he acquired it in 1969 by striking a deal with a driver who was delivering it to another location, and that he named it after one of the live buffalo in his herd. The herd suited the restaurant's Western theme, and the News Tribune notes that Stoyanoff was a John Wayne fan. In the winter of 1976 to 1977 a herd of 26 escaped repeatedly, and one animal was killed on Interstate 35. Stoyanoff then sold the herd.