St. Louis River Posts

Video: Jay Cooke Park Swinging Gate Bridge in 1939

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeQuoth the Minnesota State Parks and Trails Facebook page: “The spring ritual of visiting the Swinging Bridge at Jay Cooke State Park during high water has been around since the bridge was built in 1924. This rare 1939 video shows a family bravely crossing the river before the bridge is damaged by high water. Since it was built, the bridge has been raised seven and a half feet to try to stay above the floods. Unfortunately, mother nature doesn’t always cooperate. Today’s visitors are crossing Swinging Bridge number five!”

For the history of the swinging bridge, visit dnr.state.mn.us.

Swinging Gate Bridge at Jay Cooke Park 1920s Swinging Bridge 1920s

Postcards from the many beauty spots on the St. Louis River

One of the many beauty spots on St. Louis River between Duluth-Superior Harbor and Fond du Lac

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeAs the One River, Many Stories project draws to a close, PDD presents the remaining St. Louis River postcards from the dusty digital archive. See the recommended links at the end of this post to check out more St. Louis River postcards.

Improved habitat boosts lake sturgeon recovery in St. Louis River

Jeramy Pinkerton and Anna Varian of DNR fisheries hold the largest sturgeon ever sampled in the St Louis River.The sturgeon, 65 inches long and about 53 pounds, was captured April 20, implanted with an acoustic transmitter and PIT tag and released.

Jeramy Pinkerton and Anna Varian of DNR fisheries hold the largest sturgeon ever sampled in the St Louis River. The sturgeon, 65 inches long and about 53 pounds, was captured April 20, implanted with an acoustic transmitter and PIT tag and released.

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeFollowing years of clean water improvements and habitat projects, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources reports that lake sturgeon are returning to the St. Louis River in larger numbers. DNR fisheries staff are embarking on a new research project to study the growing numbers and learn more about how these long-lived, native species use the river and Lake Superior throughout the year.

Commerce on the River: Demolicious

Demolicious - Dianne Anderson

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeDianne Anderson launched Demolicious in 2000, creating a public drop-off site for everything but the kitchen sink. Well actually, Demolicious will take kitchen sinks. It will take anything but household garbage, hazardous materials or chemicals. Anything else is fair game, but mostly the business receives construction waste. Clients can drop off their trash for a fee or rent a roll-off, which is a large waste container Demolicious will drop off empty and pick up when filled.

Materials get sorted and separated. Wood, for example, gets grouped together and ground into wood chips. What can be recycled is recycled. The business has many repeat customers, especially contractors who use it often, as well as one-time users who wish to discard things like old furniture.

St. Louis River Story: Sharon Rogers

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgePeople in the St. Louis River watershed shared their connection to the river with WDSE-TV during the opening reception for The St. Louis River: Diverse Connections at the Duluth Art Institute. In this installment, Sharon Rogers talks about the quiet of the river, the birds, the wildlife and the flowers.

Commerce on the River: Willard Munger Inn

rsz_img_9141 (1)

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeIt all started when Willard Munger opened the Willard Munger Inn in 1954, before the Interstate Highway System and I-35 existed, when State Highway 23 was the main road into Duluth. Over time, proximity to the St. Louis River has come to mean more and more to the business as the health of the waterway has improved and outdoor tourism has grown.

Jeff Munger, grandson of the founder and current manager of the motel, recalls how his grandfather lived at the inn and woke up early every morning to tend to his guests until 1991, when his son Willard Jr. took over managing the operations. The inn has since expanded, employing eight people in the high season of summer.

Commerce on the River: Loll Designs

rsz_img_9138

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeIn a manufacturing facility a few hundred feet from Stryker Bay in West Duluth, Greg Benson leads a company dedicated to making outdoor furniture “for the modern lollygagger.” Before launching Loll Designs, however, Benson built skateboard ramps. He started out in his neighbor’s garage and eventually worked with municipalities to design and implement custom skate parks. The excess materials turned out to make attractive and durable Adirondack-style chairs, and a new business was born.

“A lot of people assume that I must have been a skater, but really I enjoy hiking, kayaking, camping and being outdoors much more,” Benson says. He and his brother Dave, both University of Minnesota Duluth graduates, along with Tony Ciardelli , founded both Loll and Epicurean, a company that makes cutting boards and other kitchen products. They sold TrueRide in 2008 to a California company and took what they had learned and ran with it.

Postcards from the Swinging Bridge at Jay Cooke State Park

Swinging Bridge Over St Louis River

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeThe text on the back of old-school Swinging Bridge postcards tends to read the same no matter what the image: “This unique Swing Bridge spans the St. Louis River in Jay Cooke State Park, 4,000 acres of rugged picturesque beauty along the rapids of the St. Louis River, extending from Carlton, Minn., to Fond du Lac, a suburb of Duluth.”

St. Louis River at Hudson’s Bay Company

St Louis River at Hudson Trading 1907

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeThis postcard, sent from Hibbing on Sept. 9, 1907, to Miss Hanna Backman of Ironwood, Mich., depicts, a “scene on the St. Louis River” in Duluth’s Fond du Lac neighborhood, “where the Hudson Bay Co. established a trading post about the year 1640.”

The Hudson’s Bay Company in general, however, wasn’t founded until 1670, so, as usual, take postcard caption information for what it is worth.

Barbarian

DavidBeard_SEMy friend John and his wife Chieko left John’s son from his first marriage behind at Stone Farm. Stone Farm, Suffolk, is all I need to write as an address on the letters and postcards I send to him twice a year in the United Kingdom. The family home (occupied by John, Chieko, John Jr., and John’s mother) is older than the United States. When the bowing timbers used to frame the home were cut, the colonies were still colonies.

John spent a week in Duluth. He was to give lectures at the Alworth Institute about energy policy in the U.K. And of course, ostensibly, he was here to visit his friend, David. But John was a fisherman. You don’t cross the Atlantic to talk about U.K. dependence on natural gas to Minnesotans. You come to fish.

We visited Gooseberry, and John took romantic photos under the falls. We ate smoked fish and lobster — John ate at Red Lobster so many times because the exchange rate between the pound and the dollar was so favorable.

Walter Whitehead’s Last Fight

Whitehead_1_ZCPOne time, way back in 1909, two pugilists who’d been exchanging “hard words” around Duluth, tried to evade the law by conducting a prizefight on a scow in the middle of the St. Louis River. This is the story of regional boxing champion Walter Whitehead’s last fight.

Rumble on the River

St. Louis River Story: Mike Casey

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgePeople in the St. Louis River watershed shared their connection to the river with WDSE-TV during the opening reception for The St. Louis River: Diverse Connections at the Duluth Art Institute. In this installment, Mike Casey, Jr. talks about how he became a volunteer with the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad.

Commerce on the River: Nelson’s Guide and Charter Service

Charlie Nelson Fishing Duluth

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeCharlie Nelson’s love of fishing started early. He spent much of his childhood catching fish near Cloquet, where his parents owned Big Lake Resort. After his parents sold the resort and bought a cabin on Island Lake north of Duluth, Nelson ramped up his quest for walleyes and spent countless hours in a fishing boat.

Through his 26 years of experience as a lieutenant colonel and an F-16 instructor pilot with the Minnesota Air National Guard, he developed a passion for teaching. Now retired, he has turned his knack for teaching and fishing into Charlie Nelson Guide and Charter Services. His website refers to him as “The Captain” whose passion for fishing is only surpassed by his love of flying.

Selective Focus: One River, Many Prints

IMG_6969

Starting this week, Selective Focus is changing direction. Instead of variations on a weekly theme as before, we will be posting brief profiles of visual artists and happenings around the area. We start it off with a collaborative project between UMD students and elementary students.

One River, Two Islands

Clough Island photo by Richard Hamilton Smith

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgeAs part of the One River, Many Stories project, Lake Superior Magazine’s April/May issue features Molly Hoeg’s profile of Clough and Spirit islands, titled “One River, Two Islands: A History & Culture Tour on the St. Louis River.”

From centuries-old bloody battles between Ojibwe and Dakota, to fist-fight riots at a resort in the late 1800s, through to modern-day habitat restoration, the history of the two islands is colorful and deep.

“Modern-day paddlers clearly feel this aura around Spirit Island just as they feel drawn to explore and enjoy Clough Island,” the story concludes. “Knowledge of both islands’ histories enriches any journey along the river. Cleaving its water with kayak or canoe, they paddle between two cultures, between the past and the future and between the heart of the forest at the river’s beginning and the vast expanse of the inland sea at its end.”