Postcard from an Outbound Freighter
This undated postcard from Zenith Interstate News Company shows a freighter exiting the Duluth shipping canal into Lake Superior.
This undated postcard from Zenith Interstate News Company shows a freighter exiting the Duluth shipping canal into Lake Superior.
Perfect Duluth Day is looking for a new curator for its ongoing Selective Focus feature. Applications are being accepted through May 9.
Curator sounds artsier than coordinator, right? And it’s not really a writing thing, is it? Well, maybe it’s a bit of all three.
One hundred years ago today a Duluth native completed his mission to recover the body of a former Duluth man who died of scurvy deep in the woods of Manitoba.
In what must be the most trivial Duluth reference ever reported on Perfect Duluth Day, we note that season 6, episode 4 of the animated television show Archer includes a scene at a Chicago airport where the flight information display system shows a scheduled Duluth departure as “on time.”
As pokes in the arm are liberally distributed and people move from six feet apart to four or five, the PDD Calendar continues to catalog local events — some in person, many online. Each month we reach out with one beggarly blog post to remind everyone that human beings and not machines are at work editing and publishing calendar events. So if you appreciate it, drop a few bucks in the PayPal account.
The postcards shown here were sold at the Douglas County Historical Museum circa 1949. Above is the pioneer kitchen display at the museum.
One hundred years ago today the Duluth Herald reported on military honors given to John Defoe, who the paper credits as “the first American Indian who fell in the World war to be returned to his native land for burial.”
The 23rd annual Homegrown Music Festival is less than a month away. A 60-page Field Guide is off the presses and will be available at local bars, restaurants and other businesses over the course of the next few days.
This undated postcard, published by Zenith Interstate News Company, shows the Steamer South American on Lake Superior. It was built for the Chicago, Duluth & Georgian Bay Transit Company and launched as an overnight passenger ship on Feb. 21, 1914. A fire in 1924 required the upper works of the vessel to be rebuilt, resulting in the addition of a second smokestack, which is shown on the postcard.
On April 5, 1921 — one hundred years ago today — Samuel Frisby Snively was elected mayor of Duluth. He held the office for four terms spanning 16 years. Duluth has had two three-term mayors who served for 12 years, John Fedo and Gary Doty.
Someone was kind enough to write the names of these love birds on their photos and keep them together. But who are Mr. and Mrs. Peter Anderson?
Miller’s Cafeteria in Duluth’s Medical Arts Building, 320 W. Superior St., has a convoluted origin story that was explored in the comments to a Perfect Duluth Day Mystery Photo in 2014 and in the Duluth News Tribune “Relics” column “An old place mat holds memories of downtown cafe,” in 2019. From those works we learned the cafe became the Captain’s Table in 1959 and closed in 1972.
This advertisement in the March 29, 1921 Duluth Herald promotes the reopening of the Commercial Cafe at 10 N. 20th Ave. W. in what is now Duluth’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. The location is probably where DLH Clothing is operating a retail store today, although all businesses in that building use the address 12 N. 20th Ave. W.
Duluth’s Civic Center includes the St. Louis County Courthouse (1909), Duluth City Hall (1928), Gerald W. Heaney Federal Building (1930), St. Louis County Jail (1923) and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument (1919).
Duluth’s Soo Line passenger depot opened at 602 W. Superior St. in 1910. It was designed by C. E. Bell, Tyrie and Chapman of Minneapolis in the Romanesque style. The depot closed in the 1960s and was torn down in 1972.
