Mystery Photo #77: Passenger Boat arriving in Duluth
Date unknown. Photographer unknown. Name of vessel unknown.
Ready? Set? Go!
Date unknown. Photographer unknown. Name of vessel unknown.
Ready? Set? Go!
Duluthian Charles O. Nelson — presumably the same Charles O. Nelson referenced in a PDD story about the West End Furniture Row — filed for and was granted a patent for a “Coffee-boiler” in 1901. The text of the claim is below.
It was ten years ago today — Nov. 4, 2008 — that Barack Obama was elected to his first term as President of the United States. Obama took nearly 53 percent of the popular vote nationwide; in Duluth he hauled in more than 68 percent. Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidates swept every 2008 contest in Duluth.
The “old” cemetery off Reservation Road northwest of Cloquet.
This book sparked a search into a Cloquet mystery from 87 years ago.
I’m not sure how I acquired the book, but there it sat, on the passenger seat of my car as I drove up Reservation Road northwest of Cloquet. There are some things you wish you could unsee — because a history buff like me wants all the facts. Alas, those facts can be elusive, especially so many years from an event. This was the case with a strange little entry in Six Feet Under: A Graveyard Guide to Minnesota.
I’m not into the morbid route to history that this little guide offers. That was my mother. She had dozens of books along the lines of “Wisconsin Death Trip,” “Hollywood Book of the Dead” or “Myths and Mysteries: Strange Stories of the Dead” on her shelves. Morbidly, she died earlier this year and perhaps that is how this book floated into my stacks. She redeemed herself in recent years by ditching the stories of others and digging into her own family history, a genealogy I greatly appreciate today.
This 1960s-era postcard shows off the Social Science Building on the University of Minnesota Duluth campus. Today the building is known as Cina Hall and serves as home to numerous liberal arts programs. It was renamed in 1985 in honor of UMD Regent Fred A. Cina, and underwent a $4.1 million renovation in 2016.
This postcard was mailed 110 years ago today — Oct. 22, 1908 — to Ms. A. J. Niles of Viroqua, Wis.
The above photo, submitted by Jay Sonnenburg, shows businesses on the 400 block of West Superior Street. At right is the WEBC Radio studio. At left are the Fargusson Building, Manhattan Building and Spalding Hotel.
“I remember the young people on the trip who said, ‘How come we’re not learning this in school? How come we didn’t know that this had happened?’ …it’s an American story.” –Carl Crawford – Human Rights Officer, Duluth to Montgomery Reflections.
We Duluthians are a proud people. We’re proud of our cityscape and the landscape around us. We’re proud of our ability to withstand the cold, even as we complain about it. We’re proud of our ability to move forward, as Mayor Emily Larson expressed in her open letter to the Rolling Stones this past summer. We Duluthians pride ourselves in the fact that we don’t hide from issues but rather actively engage with them. It was this Duluth pride that prompted a new, local podcast from the NAACP.
One-hundred years ago today, Duluth was still reeling from the devastating fires of the previous week. The Duluth Herald ran a small article celebrating the efforts during the fire of a relatively new worker in Duluth: a female conductor on the Street Railway.
This postcard is either from a century ago or last week.
Below are more items from an old trivia deck I bought at Savers.
1. How far out onto Lake Superior can the light atop Enger Tower be seen?
2. Who was the first postmaster for the Duluth region?
3. How man grain elevators were on Duluth’s waterfront at the turn of the twentieth century?
4. When was the Duluth Peony and Iris Society founded?
5. In what building did JFK speak in Duluth?
6. Who began conducting the DSSO in ‘seventy-seven?
Date unknown, artist unknown.
In honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday, this edition of the PDD Quiz tests knowledge of the Northland’s creepy places, events and history.
The next quiz, on headlines from October 2018, will be published on Oct. 28. Please email question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Oct. 24.
The day after the Fire of 1918, this hilarious sendup of the Spanish influenza outbreak appeared in the Duluth News Tribune. At the time there were a couple dozen cases in the city, and commissioners had adopted an emergency order closing public buildings to halt the spread. Within a couple weeks the disease would no longer be a joking matter; it killed 7,521 Minnesotans in 1918 alone.
