that balloon is red and inflatable

wrong color and way too small, but I will say I have been watching the Prisoner lately so my first thought was RRRRRRAWWWWOOOOOOOO

@ edgeways .. be seeing you

i'm sorry not to know this, but where is this statue? i love this photo!

Thanks for the story hbh. Jay Cooke sure seems like a goofy industrialist.

Mr. Gremmels, sir:

If it weren't for Jay Cooke, you wouldn't ever have a Perfect Duluth Day because Duluth and all the townships that became Duluth would have failed long ago. His investment in Duluth--especially building the railroads--has allowed this town to survive financial turmoil time and time again. His investment started in 1865, after he nearly single-handedly financing the Civil War for the Union. Gave little back to the people? He went broke investing in this nation's infrastructure. When he lost his fortune, the entire nation went into a depression (The Panic of '73). His investment in Duluth allowed others to come here and start businesses of their own: saw mills, flour mills, banks and all sorts of retail businesses that served the people who worked for Cooke. Ironically, if we didn't have his railroads, grain elevators, and especially the canal who's digging he financed, Duluth would not have become a center of the grain trade, which pulled us out of debt in the 1880s, and we wouldn't have been ready to be a shipping center when the Merritts started mining iron ore on the Mesaba range in the 1890s. Sure, he could be an arrogant, ignorant blowhard as HBH described, but he wasn't the only one cutting timber in the second half of the 19th century. (By the way,  income tax in the U.S. was first introduced in 1861 to help the government finance the war: in other words, to PAY COOKE BACK for loaning the U.S. the money in the first place).

I like to think that when his statue was moved across from the Kitch, it was a symbolic gesture: the gents who started that club would never have made their fortunes if Cooke hadn't cleared the path in front of them, and consequently they couldn't have made the investments that made Duluth the great City it is--or once was, depending on your perspective, I guess. (One example, like it or not: rich white guys like Chester Congdon, Guilford Hartley, Sam Snively, and Bert Enger either donated or financed the purchase of much of the land that makes up Duluth's park system; Snively's efforts alone created Seven Bridges Road and the extension and completion of Skyline Parkway; Enger bought the Leif Erikson ship and gave it to the city.) 

Sorry if this seems aggressive, TG, but when you wave the the "politically correct" flag about something that happened over 150 years ago, before studies showed the effect of clear-cut logging and other such activity--and you don't have your facts straight on top of that--well, that's just irresponsible blogging, my friend! Let's not revise history using todays standards of political correctness--it must be viewed within the context of its time. You might as well complain that the Greeks didn't not treat their Trojan prisoners according to the guidelines of the Geneva Convention.

"Peace"

Tony D.

Responsible blogging is sort of like safe sex, Tim. It doesn't really exist, but we should appreciate efforts made in its name.

Huitz, I wasn't trying to make Cooke into a "better" person than he was, and I'd bet right along with you that his efforts were more selfish than selfless. (Not sure I care  about his religious affiliation at all.) I just wanted Todd to know that Cook's efforts did a lot more for this area than simply strip away a portion of its white pine As for whether he was in love with Duluth and its trout streams, who knows. I simply think Cooke took a look at a map of the U.S. and its territories and made a logical plan for his transcontinental railroad based on geography. It couldn't've been the ore--it wasn't discovered until Cooke was long gone.