Lucette

Paul Bunyan has statues in Bemidji, Brainerd and Akeley, and Hackensack gave him a bride. Lucette stands at the access to Birch Lake, where business owner Doad Schroeder built her in 1951 from a wooden frame covered in plaster, a 17-foot figure meant to bring visitors to town the way the Bunyan tales had in other communities, according to the Echo Journal in June 2026. A naming contest followed. The winning entry, Lucette Diana Kensack, was submitted by T.J. Stasteny of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who won a two-week vacation, and the first Sweetheart Days festival was held on June 27, 1952.

The original was repainted by amateurs, and the Echo Journal says her expression changed with every touch-up. On May 18, 1991, gale-force winds blew off her head and neck. A prank bust on a 2x4 post and then a 300-pound chainsaw-carved wooden head stood in until Sweetheart Days that year. F.A.S.T. Corporation of Sparta, Wisconsin was then contracted to build a fiberglass replacement for $15,000, with $5,000 of donations credited to the Hackensack American Legion and Hackensack Lions. She arrived on June 26, 1992, keeping one enlarged hip in homage to the original, but now with a ring on her finger. Roadside America lists the present figure at 17 feet.