For your Election Day amusement we take a trip to 1995.
Twenty years ago, Gary Doty defeated challenger Herb Bergson to earn his second term as Duluth mayor. Doty served a total of three terms, holding office from 1992 to 2004. He did not seek a fourth term. Bergson became mayor in 2004, defeating Charlie Bell.
This is the last year the house on Grandview in the Chester Park area will be haunted. After 25 years, that’s sad, but thanks to the owners for such good times. Glad it was your house and not mine.
The date on this bad boy is 1909. The cover image seems to suggest there was a floating railway perpendicular to the shipping canal where people could watch flaming ships torch the city.
I noticed these in the alley behind Fond-du-Luth Casino yesterday. Anyone got a pickup truck and a nice loft space?
MPR News did a series of stories on John Vachon earlier this year, which was noted at the time on PDD along with a Duluth Milk Company photo. Today we present the rest of the Duluth Milk Company photos and a link to the lot of 61 Duluth images Vachon shot in August of 1941, from the collection of 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information.
Update: A more recent version of this chart with the 2020 figure is now available.
Below are the U.S. Census figures from the graphic, along with some additional population numbers put together by Tony Dierckins of Zenith City Online fame:
“Chester Park is popular both in summer and winter,” according to old postcard propaganda. “In it is located one of America’s highest ski jumps and also Chester Creek, one of several flowing thru the city in which trout may be caught. Duluth is the only city in the United States where trout fishing is possible within city limits.”
Well, we know the famous ski jumps came down in 2014, but there seems to be another fact in there worth examining. Was Duluth at one time really the only city with trout fishing? Prove it or debunk it, dear reader.
In the meantime, here are more snappy postcards …
Glensheen, a musical based on the book by Jeffrey Hatcher and music and lyrics by Chan Poling, opens at the History Theatre in St. Paul on Oct. 3 and runs through Oct. 25.
Good lord.
This 1909 drawing by Jay Hambridge depicts a train that attempted to outrun the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894. Engineer James Root chugged his St. Paul and Duluth Railroad locomotive into the burning city, where it was quickly stampeded by people trying to board and escape the disaster. The fire raged forward and the train ignited.
Root reversed the engine and raced six miles north to Skunk Lake. Within minutes of its arrival the train was engulfed as passengers dove into the mud and water. Root was pulled from the train and counted among the lucky survivors. Over 400 people died that day.
This little gem is postmarked Sept. 18, 1905. Hopefully Ermina B. Smith of Menominee, Mich., believed it. It’s still true 110 years later.
Fifty-year-old UMD Bulldogs football road-game poster.
Shortly after the “Postcards from the Arrowhead Bridge” post went up, my distant cousin started calling and emailing with the question, “What was that little thing in St. Louis Bay, on the Superior side of the Arrowhead Bridge, looking north?” So let’s finally get to the bottom of that.
