St. Louis River Story: Paula Vang
People 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.
People 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.
Duluth’s Parks and Recreation division is seeking public comment on 11 neighborhood parks mini-master plans, which cover improvements and additions to neighborhood parks within the St. Louis River Corridor. The included parks are Piedmont, Midtowne, Harrison, Merritt, Irving, Grassy Point, Keene Creek, Norton, Riverside, Smithville, Morgan, Blackmer, Fond du Lac and Historical.
The draft plans and comment form are available at duluthmn.gov. The plan will be presented to the Parks Commission on April 20; vote for approval will be at the May 11 meeting. Public comments are being accepted through April 20.
After several hours of splashing around, I pulled myself up to the dock. I held onto the edge and floated. My daughter said, “Your wedding ring is gone.”
What kind of kid notices that? I thought she was kidding. Then, I looked at my left hand. No ring.
I spent the next hour swimming with a scuba mask trying to pull off a miracle. The lake water looks like tea because of the tannins. Or maybe even darker like root beer. As I swam down, I could barely see. I hoped to see a little glint in the gravel. It never happened.
So, now I wear a replacement ring. The ring I put on twenty years ago sits at the bottom of the Whiteface Reservoir, a permanent part of the St. Louis River watershed. I sit like Gollum on the dock, sip my gin and tonic, gaze out over the water, and wonder about my precious. My precious.
When I was a kid, I didn’t notice things like rings on my dad’s hand. But I noticed his finger and where it pointed on the topo map. It was deer season in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I was in high school and an important part of the game plan to fill the freezer with venison.
“I’m going to sit here at the top of this drainage,” my dad said. “You walk down the road on this side of the ridge to here. Come over the ridge and walk up the drainage toward me. If you hear a shot, sit down for five minutes. Then, when you hear two shots, it means I found the deer and you can walk to me.” He said drainage so much during the huddle, I thought he was talking about nasal passages instead of a small mountain valley.
Hansi Johnson, untitled
Somehow this seems both an apt and inapt way to close my editorship of this feature. There are plenty of sites to pore over images of our region’s abundant natural beauty, but few that foreground the real people who live, work, and play here. That was my fundamental ambition; to recognize the vast human capital here, to weekly call for snapshots, pictures of domestic ordinariness, matters not needlessly prettified. Reality, even when it’s harsh is sufficiently beautiful to me.
This 1950’s-era postcard depicts American Fur Company’s trading post at Fond du Lac, now a neighborhood of Duluth. German-born John Jacob Astor founded the company more than 200 years ago — precisely April 8, 1808. His post on the St. Louis River sought to capitalize on Ojibwe fur trappers in the area, but the Ojibwe preferred to trade with the French and British, so the venture was a bust in the beginning. After the War of 1812, the United States passed a law excluding foreign traders from operating on U.S. territory, which freed the American Fur Company from its biggest competitors. By 1830, Astor’s company dominated the U.S. fur trade.
“Dear Ed and Edith,” begins the message on this postcard, mailed July 31, 1907. The penmenship gets funky in places, but the rest goes something like this: “Arrived here last night — fine trip up — leave in a few minutes for Minneapolis, where we remain until Saturday. Everything has been grand. Yes, even the weather. Trust you are full of ??? Lake like-?ess. We would be if we could get a ??? in it. Lovingly, ??? and ???”
This card traveled from Buffalo N.Y. to Mrs. W.J. Morrison of Lindsay, Ont. in 1906.
The Interstate Bridge opened in 1897. At the time it was pretty much the only way to get back and forth between Duluth and Superior — other than by boat or swimming, or going the long way around by land, or maybe jumping a train across the Grassy Point Railroad Bridge.
In 1906, the steamer Troy knocked the draw span of the Interstate Bridge into St. Louis Bay. Ferry service connected the cities for two years until repairs were completed.
Marcel LaFond grew up on Kraemer Lake, about 10 miles west of St. Cloud, where he spent nearly all his time around water and boating. His childhood home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which he believes inspired a love of timeless design at an early age. Those influences led him to found Symphony Boat Company three years ago in Duluth’s Riverside neighborhood, where he builds attractive and unique boats from aluminum, marine plywood, foam and epoxy.
“When the economy tanked five or six years ago I found that, like many other people, I was looking to reinvent myself,” he says. Ready to take a risk and follow through with ideas he’d had stewing in his mind for years, LaFond let fate steer him to the St. Louis River.
This postcard, mailed in July 1914, depicts the steel excursion steamer Columbia cruising the St. Louis River. The best synopsis of the ol’ picnic cruise experience of yesteryear is perhaps the one on the back of the card, where “Aunt Carrie” writes to Miss Virginia Stanbridge of Westminster, Mass. If the message and penmanship seem a little too perfect, take a closer look. It’s a fill-in-the-blank card.
The illustration above is from William Cullen Bryant‘s classic book Picturesque America, published by D. Appleton & Company of New York in 1872 and 1874. Bryant was editor of the book; the illustration is by Alfred R. Waud.
Sharon Mollerus, “Water Lillies”
I was fortunate to spend my first Arrowhead New Years Eve in a cabin in Jay Cooke State Park; bird watching, snow-shoeing, and far from the inebriates (though I did bring a flask). Even photographed a ghost buck (pictured below), warmed by a cedar and oak fire as a soft snow fell to welcome 2016. It was a grand introduction to the St. Louis River.
For the next two weeks Selective Focus will take part in the “One River, Many Stories” project which asks for tales of your relationship to this unique watershed. This week we’re concentrating on the river’s abundant natural beauty; a place for restive contemplation, and awe. Be sure to see the Duluth Art Institute’s kick-off the project on Monday, April 4, with a photo essay by Ivy Vainio, Tom Hollenhorst’s interactive maps, live drumming, and a video booth with PBS’s Karen Sunderman who’ll record your stories.
It’s unclear whether someone brought this sign to the Western Waterfront Trail and propped it up for public display for some reason or if it was dredged out of the St. Louis River.
This is my contribution to the One River, Many Stories project, and is epic as ever. Right here, on this fascinating island within the St. Louis River estuary, a millionaire built a large vacation home and an impressive farm that may have been the largest in the area. Here they harvested 3,500 bushels of wheat in a season, kept pigs, trained numerous racing horses, tended a herd of black angus cows, kept 40 brown swiss milking cows at one time, had 500 sheep, cared for an enormous vegetable garden, and much much more.
This was a quest to uncover remnants of the past and be immersed into an incredible story. What I discovered on kayak, on foot, and by personally meeting the author of the only book on the subject, was most surprising. See more at Ed’s Big Adventure, and perhaps be inspired to see this place for yourself.
With the One River, Many Stories project poised to fully launch in April, we present this new video shot by Dudley Edmondson on the St. Louis River.
