This postcard of the Duluth Shipping Canal was mailed 110 years ago today — Sept. 19, 1909. The postmark fades out a bit, but other details on the card indicate it was mailed from Orr, Minn. to a resident in Duluth’s Friendly West End.
This photo from Detroit Publishing Company is copyright 1906. The photographer is not credited.
Who is this guy and what’s his deal? His hat bears the number 581. The photo is from Christensen Photography of Duluth, Minn.
The state fish hatchery at 6008 London Road, near the mouth of Lester River in Duluth, was constructed in 1888 and operated until 1946. The photo above, from Detroit Publishing Company, is dated by the Library of Congress as “between 1900 and 1910.”
The undated postcard above, published by Elton H. Gujer Company of Duluth, depicts the Sunrise Motel in Hermantown.
These two cabinet cards presumably feature two different women, although they look a touch similar. The mystery isn’t just who they are, but also what the deal was with Howorth.
Even if you’re not a history nerd, you’ve got to admire the effort put into finding and recreating these photos and the point of view. The images are from John McLoughlin’s @duluth_then_and_now account on Instagram.
View of Duluth on the Shore of Lake Superior (1870)
The Minnesota Reflections database contains a large number of high-quality historic photographs of Duluth. Most of these are scans of old prints in excellent condition. Some of the photos in the collection, however, come from torn, faded, scratched, taped or otherwise damaged prints. Many of these damaged prints belong to the collection of photographs taken by Paul B. Gaylord, a photographer from Ohio who moved to Duluth in 1869 and published some of the earliest images of the area.
A recent post on Perfect Duluth Day featured a “Postcard from the West End of Duluth” that was properly captioned by the postcard company. The postcard shown above, however, shows a similar scene and is captioned as “West Duluth, Minn.”
The Duluth Public Library’s Vintage Duluth blog recently published a retrospective on the Duluth Seaway Portarama, an annual summer festival sponsored by the Duluth Jaycees from 1959 to 1969. The modern day relevancy, as the post notes, is that in February the Minnesota House of Representatives repealed sections 333.50, 333.51 and 333.52 of Statute 19-1642, “eliminating crime of unauthorized use of the name and mark “portorama.”
This postcard was mailed Sept. 2, 1939, to Donna Buhler of Toledo, Ohio. Her parents had just arrived in Duluth.
Here’s a peek at what the Denfeld Hunters gridiron crew looked like 75 years ago, in the fall of 1944. That’s legendary coach Walt Hunting up top and center.
