I am looking to talk to folks who might have a memory of being in Duluth’s Soap Box Derby — either on London Road but especially the last few years that it was in Hartley Park.
The elm tree in the center of the photo above stood in the stream bank where the old farm road/junction of Stornaway Street was until the blowdown of 2016. The photo is from Hartley Nature Center where the Dale Mell’s 1964 derby car is displayed.
In this edition of the PDD Video Lab we’ve stolen footage from the UMD Viz Lab and added music. The video features hikers in Duluth’s Hartley Park, shot in a 360-video reframe technique. At PDD we’ve enhanced it simply by adding the title track from the Who’s 1973 rock opera Quadrophenia.
I was out at Hartley Park this morning and saw that someone had posted signs letting visitors know that the city is considering paving a bunch of trails there. I looked up the mini master plan for Hartley that SRF Consulting Group prepared, and it does indeed call for paved trails running through the park to provide access for bikers, wheelchairs, and parents with strollers. I’m curious about what other PDDers think of this proposal.
Almost exactly a year after the historic flood, we found the timing to be refreshingly ironic as we set off on our annual tree planning exercise. Employees from Loll Designs, Epicurean, and Intectural all joined to plant trees in four areas around Duluth (Amity Creek, Hartley, Kingsbury Creek, and Featherstone Drive). As it is known, erosion from stream beds were hit hard from the flood and we saw that first-hand as we sought to plant and rehab those areas.
Twelve-year-old Harold “Bo” Conrad won the 1963 Duluth race where Hartley Nature Center is today and went on to win the All-American Soap Box Derby Race in Akron, Ohio, where there were 75,000 people watching.
