In 1964, Jocko and Lee Nelson purchased Clearwater Lake Lodge and the four remaining cabins.  Outside of the Boostroms the Nelson family is the longest tenured and well known owners of the lodge.  With the Boundary Waters being officially established in 1964, they had to remove all the motor boats from within the parks boundaries and reestablish the canoe outfitting business.  Jocko, a well known football coach for the University of Michigan and the Minnesota Vikings used his name for marketing purposes and changed the name officially to Jocko’s Clearwater Lodge.  Jocko and Lee worked hard to adjust to the Wilderness Act and the change in clientele that brought with it.  In addition to increasing the canoe business, they built two new cabins and converted two rooms upstairs into suites.

While the resort was named Jocko’s, most guests remember seeing Lee far more than Jocko.  Even after purchasing the lodge Jocko continued to coach football and was often gone for recruiting, scouting trips, practices and games.  Lee often joked that the resort should have been called Lee’s Clearwater Lodge.

 Jocko passed away suddenly in 1978 the same year the federal government was tightening regulations on the BWCA and its surrounding lands.  With intentions to tear down the lodge and install a public boat access the U.S Forest Service offered Lee $425,000(more than 10 times what they had paid in 1964) to purchase the property.  With the loss of Jocko and the new difficult regulations, the offer was very tempting.  Lee later said she couldn’t bear the thought of tearing down the lodge which meant so much to so many people and was a place her husband dearly loved.  She also felt a connection and responsibility to former owners of the lodge, and to a man like Charlie Boostrom who hadn’t spent decades in the wilderness carving out a life and building a lodge to simply see it all torn down.

After Lee turned down the Forest Service’s offer, they notified her that they were filing for imminent domain and would force her to take the deal.  With the help of Bill Raff, a respected historian and politician they worked to have Clearwater Lode placed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1982 the U.S. Department of Interior officially accepted that application.  This designation essentially protected the lodge indefinitely from any future threat from both private and public interests.

Jocko and Lee Nelson’s daughter Margy officially took over as owner and operator of the lodge in 1986, and the first thing she did was to change the name to simply Clearwater Lodge.  Up until this time the vast majority of canoes used in the area were 80 pound aluminum canoes.  Margy began upgrading not only the equipment sent out on canoe trips, but also the canoes.  She was one of the first outfitters on the Gunflint Trail to carry Kevlar canoes.