History Posts

KDAL sells the Duluth-Superior-Iron Range market

KDAL 610 AM is a commercial talk radio station in Duluth, owned and operated by Midwest Communications. There was also a KDAL-TV, which later became KDLH and then merged with KBJR.

Media Excavations: Ojibway Publications

Well, I’m not sure how to feel about posting this advert pulled from the Media History Digital Library, because the name of the company bears no connection to the people, that I can tell …

… but Ojibway Publications was a nationally significant trade-magazine publisher located in Duluth.

Duluth, a Cosmopolitan City

Advertising campaigns for Duluth’s KDAL radio in the trade press were intent on revealing the cosmopolitan dimensions of Duluth. These ads both reveal Duluth’s unique industries and reveal that some of Duluth’s retail, especially, can stand shoulder to shoulder with other major urban areas.

Media Excavations: Duluth-Superior Television Revolution

This ad campaign, luring businesses to advertise on TV in Duluth/Superior uses a picture of supporters of the Revolutionary government of Cuba manning a machine gun post overlooking one of the main streets, Zapata Avenue, into the heart of Havana, Jan. 4, 1959.

“They Want Culture but Won’t Watch It”

Radio and television audiences in Duluth were surveyed in 1961. While the general demographics could be useful for media historians, it might surprise the readers of Perfect Duluth Day that, in 1961, the category of “first generation Scandinavian immigrants” was statistically significant in a survey like this. We are not so far away from the days when Duluth was a rich community built from immigrants, with all the magic and tension that follows from immigration.

Information from Media History Digital Library.

Media Excavations: KDAL and WEBC

Briefly, Duluth-Superior radio stations KDAL and WEBC advertised together. I found these joint ads while scouring a database of media trade publications.

Media Excavations: WEBC

I’ve been excavating media magazines for references to Duluth. Some of them are adverts for WEBC 560 AM, which is presently branded at “Northland Fan” and broadcasts Duluth-area sports interspersed with statewide sports talk from KFAN in Minneapolis and national sports talk from FOX Sports Radio.

Duluth Central High School 1920 Zenith Yearbook

Archive.org has the 1920 Duluth Central High School yearbook, Zenith, available for perusal online.

Select Images from the 1941 Denfeld Oracle

The Internet Archive hosts the 1941 edition of the Denfeld Oracle. My friends’ grandparents — those are the folks I am looking for in here, I think. And a nod to “then and now.”

Postcard from West Superior Street at Sixth Avenue East

Among the legible signs in this undated postcard: Hill Hotel, Hamm’s Beep, bus station, Holland Hotel, Lyceum Theatre, Spalding Hotel, Saratoga Hotel, Hotel Tavern, Dove Clothing Store.

Standard Salt and Cement Company

The most amazing thing new Duluth residents don’t realize is what Canal Park looked like just 40 years ago.

Archive.org includes a catalog for Standard Salt and Cement Company, a business that used to be located in Canal Park.

A Psychogeographical Map of Duluth, 2004

I drew this conceptual map of Duluth’s arts-and-music-scene in 2004, then filed it away for 18 years. The details may only interest old-school scenester hipsters, but the broad strokes reflect my thinking on what makes Duluth cool, and the nature of scenes as social units. The word “psychogeographical” refers here to the artistic arrangement of my little sociological analysis.

Local rocker Nat Harvie once observed to me that old-school Duluthians gush about these bygone days with little provocation. True. I moved to Duluth in 1998 in what is widely regarded as its heyday, its coming-to-awareness-of-itself as a music-and-arts scene. This can be roughly correlated with the formation of the Ripsaw News, now long defunct. That storied rag began in opposition to the Reader as the premier alternative newsweekly and we were off to the races. I remember an early Ripsaw meeting with Brad Nelson and Cord Dada and a room of creatives, and the question was, “Who can do what?” I said, “I am a writer and cartoonist,” and I was in.

Duluth had everything I wanted in its vital percolations. I graphed the scene as I saw it, below:

NorShor Theatre in Movie Trade Magazines

Movie trade publications loved the NorShor Theatre and its milk bar. These features on the NorShor were taken from the Media History Digital Library.

Patrick-Duluth way up in the snow

I saw a ship a-sailing
From old Duluth one day,
And oh! it was all laden
With coats for boys, they say!

Summer Trips to the Northwest through Duluth, 1911

The Internet Archive hosts advertisements from transportation-themed magazines. This one features Duluth as the endpoint on a steamer trip to the Northwest, before joining the train to Seattle and points nearby in Canada and Oregon.