This is the 75th year for the antique shop on County Road 66, and the ownership papers now carry a different name than they did a year ago. In 2025, 88-year-old Teddie Nelson formally handed Curious Belongings to her grandson Austin Nelson and his husband, Collin. Most small businesses in a seasonal town don't get a fourth generation. The ones that survive long enough to hand down usually do it by staying exactly the same, decade after decade, until the sign itself becomes the landmark. Curious Belongings didn't do that. It has changed its name three times, closed a second location it spent 21 years building, and swapped its own founding purpose along the way. The reason it's still standing while so much else on that stretch of highway has turned over is that it never tried to be one business for very long.
That's worth sitting with if you've ever driven past the place and assumed it was always an antique store. It wasn't. And the story of how it became one, and stayed one, says something about what actually keeps a business alive here longer than a season or two.
A Resort First, a Shop Second
The family's story in Crosslake starts in 1945, when Ted and Betty Ball opened the Birch Hill Inn, a resort and restaurant. Six years later, in 1951, Betty pivoted into a second line of work entirely, opening The Tulip Antique Shop alongside it. That's the detail easy to miss: the business that's about to turn 75 didn't start as an antique store. It started as a side venture next to a lodging business, the kind of thing a resort owner might try during a slow season to see if it caught on.
It caught on. Betty's antique shop outlasted the resort it was born next to, which is its own quiet lesson. In a town built around seasonal lodging, the side hustle sometimes has more staying power than the main business it was supposed to support.
Three Names for the Same Family
Somewhere in the decades between Betty's Tulip Antique Shop and today, the store became known as The People's Antique Store. That name held until 2014, when the family rebranded again, this time as Curious Belongings, reflecting what they describe as a broader, more curated approach to home decor rather than a straight antique inventory. Three names, one family, one physical location on County Road 66 the whole time.
That pattern matters more than any single rename. A business that keeps its name for 75 years is often just coasting on recognition. A business that changes its name three times and keeps its customers anyway is doing something harder: it's proving the loyalty was never to the sign out front. It was to the family running the place.
Austin Nelson, Teddie's grandson, started learning the trade in 2003 at ten years old, the kind of detail that only makes sense in a family business where the back room doubles as a classroom. He took over day-to-day management of the Crosslake store in 2007, nearly two decades before he'd formally own it. By the time the ownership papers changed in 2025, he'd already been running the place longer than some full careers last.
The Store That Got Smaller on Purpose
Here's the part of the story that runs against the usual small-business script. In 1997, Teddie's daughter Victoria Rangel joined the business, and together they expanded, opening a second location, 202 Antiques on Main, in nearby Crosby. That's the growth chapter you'd expect from a company hitting its stride. Two towns, two storefronts, more inventory moving through the family's hands than ever.
Then, after 21 years, they closed it. The family consolidated back down to the single Crosslake location, the one Betty had opened in 1951. In an industry where the instinct is almost always to expand, the family chose to shrink its footprint instead, and that decision is a big part of why there's still a Curious Belongings to hand down at all. Running two locations means splitting attention, inventory, and the kind of personal relationships that make an antique shop worth driving to in the first place. Closing Crosby wasn't a retreat. It was the family deciding that one location, run well by people who actually knew every piece on the shelves, was worth more than two locations run thin.
What Actually Changed in 2025
When Teddie passed the business to Austin and Collin, the handoff looked less like a sale and more like what it was: the next name in a family ledger that already had three others on it. Teddie herself didn't disappear. She remains an important fixture and advisor at the shop, and Victoria continues on as a business associate when needed. Nothing about the succession suggests an ending. It reads more like the same reinvention the shop has done every decade or two, just with different hands doing the sorting now.
That continuity is the part a lot of small-town institutions lose when ownership changes. The knowledge of where a piece came from, which estate it was pulled from, why one glass cabinet is priced differently than the one next to it, usually walks out the door with the person who built it. Here, it didn't. Austin had already spent 22 years absorbing that knowledge before his name went on the paperwork.
Finding It This Fall
If you're planning a visit this season, the shop shifts its rhythm the way a lot of Crosslake does once the water traffic thins out. Through the fall and into December, and again in spring, Curious Belongings runs on Saturday hours, with weekday visits available by appointment. It's a different pace than the busy summer schedule, but it's also arguably the better time to actually look. The lower level holds vintage furniture and kitchen primitives, along with an in-house library, the kind of layout that rewards a slow Saturday morning more than a quick July stop between boat trips.
This week, while the rest of town gears up for Crosslake Days, the shop keeps doing what it's done every fall for 75 years: open the doors on Saturday, restock whatever came in from the latest estate sale, and let people wander through four generations of inventory at their own pace.
The Lesson in the Longevity
Seventy-five years is a long time for any small business, and it's a genuinely long time for one in a town whose population multiplies every summer and thins out every winter. The easy explanation is nostalgia, that people keep coming back because the place feels the same as it always has. The research doesn't support that story. The place has changed its name three times, changed its footprint once, and carried the business through four generations of the same family. What's stayed constant is the family, not the format.
That's a useful thing to know about Crosslake generally, not just about one shop on County Road 66. The businesses that last here aren't always the ones that resist change. Often they're the ones willing to become something slightly different every decade while keeping the people and the relationships intact. It's the same instinct that keeps families on the same stretch of the Whitefish Chain for generations, adapting the cabin, the dock, the way the property gets used, while the reason for holding onto it stays exactly the same.
If a fall drive past the shop turns into something bigger, like wondering what it might take to plant your own family's roots on this lake for a few generations, the Pederson Team would be glad to talk through what that actually looks like. Schedule a Lakeside Consultation whenever you're ready.
