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GRAND MARAIS, Minn. – Rewind to August weekends here, when visitors queued up for entry to downtown shops, it was nearly impossible to find a hotel room and one restaurant was selling enough tacos on a given night to feed half of this small town s population.
Throughout this hectic summer tourism season, when businesses were at times overwhelmed by traffic, many of Cook County s 5,400 permanent residents worried: Would this be the week the out-of-towners caused a massive COVID-19 outbreak? It was terrifying at first, said Jill Terrill, who owns Joy & Company, a boutique in the remote county along the North Shore of Lake Superior.