And here's an article from the library's online NewsBank:

Upstairs, downstairs some Goat Hill families are stepping out with renewed optimism
Duluth News-Tribune 
Sunday, April 14, 1996
By Chuck Frederick

Word spread quickly across the top of Goat Hill. Four inches of snow coming. "That's a lot of snow for up here,'' said Walt Macintosh.

The Duluth neighborhood's steep streets are tough enough to drive in good weather. With snow on the way, Macintosh and his neighbors know that if they don't want to be stranded, they have to move their cars and vans near the bottom of Goat Hill.

So one by one on this blustery, soon-to-be-snowy, spring day, they each pressed a foot to the brake pedal and eased down West Fourth Street to old Piedmont Avenue. Once on West Third Street, they found parking places and then climbed 71 wobbly, wooden stairs back to their homes above.

"We're Duluth's hillbillies. Everyone else is a flatlander,'' Walt's wife, Kathy Macintosh, said with a grin. ``We have our own little city up here. It's like living on your own little mountain. I wouldn't trade it for anything."

Steep ambitions

Life can be hard on Goat Hill, a cluster of about 70 homes below Enger Tower. There are stairs to climb and friends who won't visit because of the steep hills. There also are yards littered with junk cars, vacant lots filled with garbage, houses covered by peeling paint and a lack of money to make things nicer.

But the hillside neighborhood that's so easy to dismiss while motoring off the interstate and up Piedmont Avenue isn't the run-down place it might seem. Not to the people who live there.

Most of them choose to see the neighborhood's potential -- the beautiful place it once was and again could be, the breathtaking views of the Duluth-Superior Harbor, and the few homes that have been fixed up.

Their optimism isn't unfounded. There's evidence that Goat Hill has hit bottom and is now rebounding.

The wobbly stairway that stretches in an L-shape from West Third Street to 18 1/2 Avenue West will be rebuilt this spring with $30,000 from the federal Housing and Urban Development office. The project is long overdue, residents say. Three years ago, someone actually crashed through one of the steps and was left dangling by his backpack.

Another $50,000 from HUD will help build a parking lot near the top of the hill. It'll ease congestion along narrow 18 1/2 Avenue West and maybe even make the pre-snow drives down the hill unnecessary. The lot is estimated to cost about $80,000. It's unclear when it will be built.

Other neighbors are writing grant requests to rebuild retaining walls and put in new sidewalks. Still others have begun to take it upon themselves simply to pick up garbage in vacant lots, clear away weeds and plant new pines.

"We're working on the neighborhood again," said Dan Nyquist, who lives on Fir Avenue, which is actually a stairway. A roadway probably would have been too steep.

A professional landscaper, Nyquist shuffled down a steep sidewalk one overcast morning recently. He paused occasionally to clip branches and weeds that had grown past the railing. He's one of the neighborhood's newer residents, eager to make Goat Hill a better place to live.

This summer, he plans to cut down diseased, dead and overcrowded trees in Goat Hill's Central Park. With the help of neighbors he's now trying to organize, Nyquist also hopes to repair bluestone retaining walls, weed and seed along streets, fix railings, control erosion and maybe even establish community gardens in vacant, tax-forfeited lots.

"There's a renewed attitude in this neighborhood," he said. "We're trying. It's going to take money and time and energy. But we'll get it going."

Nyquist is among a handful of Goat Hill residents who truly believe the neighborhood can resemble the neat, well-kept place it was when the main highway from the Twin Cities passed through on its way downtown.

Some skeptical

Margaret Cherro remembers those days, but is skeptical her neighborhood will ever recapture its charm.

"When we first moved here it was a beautiful spot," said Cherro, 90, who moved to Goat Hill from the Iron Range in 1916. "The lawns were like velvet carpets and everyone took such good care of their property. But then the people got old and the houses changed hands and each time they changed hands they got a little bit worse and a little bit worse. It's all deteriorated now. The neighborhood used to be so friendly. Now we don't even know who our neighbors are."

What happened in Goat Hill has happened elsewhere, Cherro said. "We all grew up during the Depression. None of us had anything. So when we grew up and had a little bit, we were so proud. We decided that our children would never live like we had to. But the problem with that is that kids today expect so much. They want everything handed to them. So when no one takes care of their property, they don't do it either.

"I still have a million-dollar view," Cherro said, "but I don't have a million-dollar neighborhood anymore."

Pam and Jim Guzzo also have a million-dollar view. But when they gaze at the neighborhood from the deck that wraps around two sides of their home, they see a place that's improving.

"Ten years ago, it was in really bad shape," said Jim, a school bus driver who bought and completely renovated his grandmother's house. "Every house was rough and in bad shape. Now, I'll bet half have been redone."

Others are still being worked on. New porches are being built. Old homes are being wrapped with new siding. And more residents are talking up their neighborhood.

Moving up

"It's like living in the country here," Kathy Macintosh said, leaning against the kitchen table in her home on top of the hill. "We escaped the city, but instead of moving out, we moved up and above it."

"And we hardly ever get robbed up here," Walt Macintosh quickly added. "A thief would be all out of breath after climbing 71 stairs. He'd be too tired to steal anything."

As best as most longtime residents can figure, Goat Hill got its nickname because goats were once raised there by an Italian family.

How many goats is a matter of debate. Margaret Cherro, 90, and a resident of Goat Hill since 1916, said there was one goat and that the Italian family needed its milk for medicinal purposes.

Laimi Linden, 84, said the family had three goats. She also said the neighborhood was nicknamed by a group of kids who had formed a baseball team in her neighborhood. They needed a name and coined the tag Goat Hill.

"On top of all that," Goat Hill resident Kathy Macintosh said, "people figure you'd have to be a goat to live on this hill. You probably do, but I sure wouldn't trade it."

Here's a related story from two years later:

Gardener transforms forgotten park
Duluth News-Tribune 
July 1, 1998
By Daniel Bernard

The section of the Duluth hillside beneath Enger Tower is green, but too steep and craggy to be developed. For the last half century, City Hall and the community have largely forgotten the 33-acre patch that rolls from Skyline Parkway to First Street between 14th and 17th avenues west.

But the rangy stretch of hill intrigued Dan Nyquist when he and his wife and son moved to 18th Avenue West in the Goat Hill neighborhood in 1995.

Nyquist, a Duluth native who works for the city as a gardener, noticed the slope contained choice plateaus for viewing the lake and the city, such as one overlook northeast of Second Street and 17th Avenue West. Beneath straggles of thistle, ragweed and chokeberry trees lay walking trails, one northwest of Third Street and 14th Avenue that leads to Enger.

"I called the city to find out who owned it," Nyquist said.

The city owns it, Nyquist discovered. The wooded area is a bona fide city park named "Central Park." Research showed that after the hill was clear-cut in 1880s, it was used for hiking and picnics.

In 1911, the city drew up a master plan that envisioned a wending network of manicured trails, but funding never materialized. Nyquist said records suggest the city has not maintained the area for at least 40 years. Its poplars, dogwoods and hazelnut shrubs became overgrown and diseased.

In 1995, Nyquist started pruning, weeding and culling in the woods. He planted orange lilies, purple lupines and white Shasta daisies from his own yard. Where debris-clogged streams overran trails, he rerouted them.

In 1996, Nyquist sought a Neighborhood Matching Grant from the city to spruce up Central Park some more. He was approved for $1,000 and planted 400 perennial native wildflowers, 50 shrubs and 150 trees. To the resident aspens, willows, birches and cottonwoods, he added sugar maples, red oaks, white cedars and tamaracks -- some seedlings, some 1 1/2-inches thick.

Apart from his full-time day job working at parks around the city, for Nyquist, fixing up Central Park became somewhat of a part-time second job, with occasional help from his family and neighbors. He took two weeks' vacation in May only to spend 100 hours working in the woods.

This month, the city approved a second Neighborhood Matching Grant of $3,000. Nyquist, 38, plans to plant another 400 trees and shrubs and 500 wildflowers.

Now City Gardener Tom Kasper is talking about making the area an "urban arboretum" featuring native Minnesota trees as an outdoor learning experience for school children. The city plans next year to start weeding and clearing the area regularly with help from neighbors. Even sooner, they'll erect a sign so everyone will know the wooded area has a name. Central Park remains scruffy and challenging for walkers. Kasper says it will always be "wild."

"We need more parks like this one is, which is natural," Kasper said. "Until Dan came along, the park had pretty much been completely forgotten."