Let’s tell the tale of Captain Billy Fawcett, whose unlikely publishing empire began in Robbinsdale and eventually reached national and international prominence. Born Wilford Hamilton Fawcett in Canada in 1885, Fawcett was restless from an early age, leaving school at 16, joining the Army, serving in the Philippines, working as a railroad mail clerk, and eventually becoming a police reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. After World War I and a brief, ill-fated attempt to run a Minneapolis bar during Prohibition, Fawcett invested his last $500 in a small humor publication called Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang. He established the publication at 4168 West Broadway in Robbinsdale, where its phenomenal success transformed the community into an unexpected center of American popular publishing.
As Fawcett Publications grew, Captain Billy used his Robbinsdale-made fortune to create another legendary enterprise: Breezy Point Resort on Big Pelican Lake. The lavish resort combined rustic Minnesota surroundings with the amenities of a luxury hotel, including electricity, private baths, fine dining, golf, trap shooting, aviation, and celebrity guests. Fawcett regularly flew between Robbinsdale and the resort, and the property also developed a wilder reputation during Prohibition, with an illegal speakeasy, casino, bootlegging connections, and colorful stories of liquor being delivered by airplane. Meanwhile, the Robbinsdale offices continued producing an extraordinary variety of magazines, supported by a talented group of local editors and illustrators known as the “Robbinsdale Fauceteers.”
Captain Billy died in 1940, but his family carried his legacy forward for decades. His five children inherited Fawcett Publications and moved aggressively into the booming comic-book business, creating Captain Marvel and a host of other characters and titles. His daughter Marion remained an equal co-owner and lived long enough to see the company expand into magazines, paperback publishing, and other ventures before CBS purchased Fawcett Publications for $50 million in 1977. Marion died in 1993, having witnessed the extraordinary transformation of her father’s original Robbinsdale operation—from a $500 gamble on West Broadway into a publishing powerhouse whose influence reached far beyond Minnesota.