An intersection of grids along North Central Avenue near Denfeld (image from Google Earth)

Duluth formed from the merger of multiple smaller townships, with these townships themselves comprised of multiple different housing additions. These additions were almost always laid out on a grid, but the orientation of that grid was often effected by the often challenging elements of Duluth’s geography, such as rivers, streams, hills, and Lake Superior, as well as the existence of other grids. In the early days of Duluth, the different grid systems had gaps between them, but as the city grew, the gaps closed, resulting in some novel intersections and street patterns. This Geoguessr looks at the conflict between different grid systems in Duluth.

Photo of the Hemlock Exchange in 1920 by Hugh McKenzie. (Photo from the Northeast Minnesota Collections of the Kathryn A. Martin Library)

A year after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, George W. Coy set up the first telephone exchange. Making a call to a specific phone required plugging the right cord into the right socket, and that required a person working out of an exchange building. Photos from the Minnesota Digital Library show the Duluth neighborhood exchanges that were operated by the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company in 1920. This post discusses the role of telephone exchanges as a source of employment for women in Duluth with a Geoguessr challenge that reveals what those telephone exchanges look like now.

Arriving in Duluth (Photo by Matthew James)

“Twenty-six miles long and an average of 2-1/2 miles wide, Duluth is squeezed between rocky bluffs and the waterfront of Lake Superior and the St. Louis River,” a National Geographic reporter wrote when describing the city in 1949. This post describes some of the stranger contours of our long and narrow city with a Geoguessr challenge at the end to test your knowledge of the city limits.

The city center of Groningen, The Netherlands, not to be confused with Groningen Township, 70 miles south of Duluth (Photo by Matthew James)

There’s a lot of Minnesota history to be found in the names on a map. Some places, like Iron Junction, reflect the industry that created the town. Many names come from Anishinaabemowin, like Mahnomen, derived from manoomin, meaning wild rice. And some city names both reflect their primary industry and come from Anishinaabemowin, like Biwabik, which comes from the Ojibwe word for iron. This Geoguessr challenge looks specifically at places in Minnesota that took their names from locations from around the world.

No gas of any sort, leaded or otherwise, is to be found here. (Photo by Matthew James)

Some small part of the business history of Duluth remains written in the landscape. Names painted on the sides of buildings and logos atop poles on the edges of vacant lots promote businesses that saw their last customer some years ago.