Fifty years ago — Aug. 8, 1965 — the DNT reports the 18th annual Duluth International Folk Festival abandoned its home at Leif Erikson Park to avoid rainy conditions, moving the party across the street to the Duluth National Guard Armory.
It took quick work by members of the Duluth Jaycees, National Guardsmen and a host of other volunteers to get the festival in shape after it was apparent Leif Erikson Park wouldn’t do. Sloshing about in puddles, the men brought tons of equipment and materials for booths across London Road in the early morning hours for the festival’s opening at 11 a.m. …
And well over 10,000 area enthusiasts responded by flocking to the armory and participating in the day-long carousel of fun. …
The prairie really did meet the sea at Saturday’s spectacle, where booths, foods, costumes, music and dances from a multitude of countries were merged under one roof. Visitors could toss down beer in a German “Hofbrau,” munch on tacos at the Mexican pavilion, or casually stop for tea and scones at the oh-so-British booth. …
There was fine linen and gleaming cutlery in the Norwegian booth, polished and cut stones in the Gem and Mineral exhibit, a variety of pine cones in the Duluth Garden Flower Society display, and 10 kinds of bread in the 4-H booth.
Old books, crowded into stalls, delighted many. There was a great deal of tripe (no one purchased, for instance, “The Confessions of Artemus Quibble”), but a few volumes, like the Italian poet D’Annunzio’s “The Triumph of Death,” were snapped up quickly by connoisseurs who recognized a nickle bargain when they saw one.
So, what became of the annual Folk Festival? It had to be moved to Bayfront Festival Park in 1990, when construction began at Leif Erikson Park to make way for the I-35 freeway tunnels and Lakewalk trail. It returned to Leif Erikson Park in 1996, but in 2005 it was moved back to Bayfront and renamed the Duluth Festival of Cultures. The new name was intended to emphasize that it was a cultural event and not a festival of folk music. For whatever reason, the whole thing fizzled out shortly after the change, with the final event held in 2007.
And now we move on to random photos from the Sunday edition.
