They throttled a Minnesota river attempting to find him. What happened to Larry Franklin?

CARLTON, Minn. — For two decades, the search for Larry Edward Franklin, a 47-year-old man from Mount Vernon, Illinois, has centered on Jay Cooke State Park.

But that's not where he was last spotted. Franklin came to the Northland to explore and photograph the natural beauty of its parks and trails.

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Franklin had been faithfully checking in with family members throughout the journey to share his adventures and itinerary. Then, the calls stopped on Sept. 23, 2003, after he left the Grand Portage Lodge in Grand Portage, Minnesota.

Back home in Illinois, family members grew increasingly worried. So much so, that they made the trip north to look for Larry.

They checked parks around Grand Portage, working their way down the shore until at last Franklin’s silver 2001 Ford Focus was discovered at Carlton’s Jay Cooke State Park. But Larry was nowhere to be found.

Local authorities swung into action, and from Monday, Sept. 29, to Wednesday, Oct. 1, at least 10 agencies participated in a massive search, scouring the 8,938-acre park.

"They had a huge complement of people involved," recalled Kristine Hiller, a park naturalist at Jay Cooke for the past 23 years.

Teams traced the park's serpentine and elaborate trail network to no avail and conducted a thorough cross-country search, using a grid system to ensure no corner of the rocky wilderness was overlooked. Crews made use of dogs, horses, all-terrain vehicles and a helicopter, as they searched for any trace of the missing hiker.

Minnesota Power even agreed to throttle back the flow of the St. Louis River at the Thomson Dam to allow search teams to more closely comb the waterway for any signs of the missing hiker. But they still came up empty.

Franklin's dejected family returned home to Illinois.

Then-Carlton County Sheriff Kevin Mangan told the News Tribune the search, while unsuccessful, had been thorough.

“Realistically, I don’t know where we could look anymore,” he said.

At the time, he speculated that there was “a very good possibility” Franklin had fallen into the river.

Kelly Lake, who now serves as Carlton County sheriff and was an officer at the time, recalls the search as thorough and extensive. She, too, believes the river most likely became Franklin's final resting place.

"We have no other explanation that would make sense," she said. "He could have fallen into the river. That's our only logical explanation."

Hiller suspects Franklin wound up in the river as well.

"If there was anything in the woods, someone would have stumbled across it," she said, noting that even after the exhaustive search, hunters had roamed the area that fall, and there was a follow-up organized search of the area again one year later.

She said cadaver dogs returned to the same spot in the river, but it was a treacherous stretch of water with difficult access.

Hiller said Franklin was known to be fond of photographing waterfalls and was likely drawn to the rapids of the St. Louis River.

"If he came in the morning, the rocks can be pretty icy even at that time of year," she said.

And while the river isn't typically raging in the fall, Hiller said it has strong currents year-round, particularly in areas where tilted rock formations channel the flow.

Jay Cooke has been the site of previous drownings, including one in April 1998, when a hiker fell into the swollen St. Louis during the spring melt, and another in September 2011, when a swimmer caught in the river’s current was swept away.

Franklin is described as a slight man, standing 5-foot-6-inches tall and weighing about 145 pounds. He was 47 years old at the time of his disappearance and would be 67 years old today. He has brown hair and brown eyes, and wears spectacles. Franklin is balding and may have been wearing a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap. At the time of his disappearance, he may also have been wearing jeans, a T-shirt, a bright blue nylon jacket and a black canvas fanny pack with a camera inside it.

Franklin has no known immediate family members still alive. His father, Leo Franklin, died a year after his son’s disappearance, and his mother, Wilma, died in 2021 at age 90. Wilma Franklin’s obituary indicates Larry’s sister, Debra Sweeten, is dead as well.

Jay Cooke is the fifth-busiest state park in Minnesota, annually attracting more than 400,000 people. It is well-traveled, but Hiller said no trace of Franklin or his belongings has been recovered. There was a T-shirt recovered from a riverbank one year that was briefly considered to be of interest. But it was quickly ruled out as having belonged to Franklin.

"It's an absolutely sad story," Hiller said. "Of course, we don't like to lose any of our visitors. But that had to be really tough on his family, never to know where he went or exactly what happened."

Anyone with information about Franklin and this cold case is encouraged to call the Cook County Sheriff’s Office at 218-387-3030.