Month: October 2026
Dog Water Rescue Emergency
Video from the Oct. 2 rescue in the Duluth Ship Canal after a dog jumped onto and over the pier wall into the water. The United States Coast Guard, Duluth Fire Department, St. Louis County Sheriff’s rescue boat and Duluth Fire Boat Marine 19 all responded.
Meanwhile, the bulk carrier Algoma Niagara waited to depart through the canal. (more…)
Superior Street, Sept. 11, 1907, Part 7: The Odd-numbered Side of Superior Street and Fifth Avenue West
Superior Street in 1907 (Photo from the Library of Congress)
Part seven of this ten part series examining a single photo in depth looks at the businesses on the odd numbered side of Fifth Avenue West and Superior Street. It looks at the group of stores that were replaced by the Holland Hotel and reveals their direct connection to that hotel. It also looks at the stores occupying the ground floor of the Lyceum Theater and explains why the lit up sign across Fifth Avenue appears to say “See the Welcome.” (more…)
Lake Superior’s Nazi U-boat Wreck
Notes of UMD Professor Joseph Marrow on discovering and exploring the World War II wreck of the U-61 in the waters off Duluth, 1975:
“The shifting silts of the lake floor parted, revealing the submarine, rising from its secret history on a wave of sand 200 feet beneath the surface. Our sonar scans detected it and we dove it a week later. By the wreck of a small fishing boat, it was the U-61, the old Nazi training sub repurposed late in the war for a desperate suicide terror mission. Long regarded as a Great Lakes myth, the 150-foot-long wreck lay deep in America all along, deep enough to require technical diving skills to access it. The conning tower hatch was open and my team and I swam inside, passing our tanks ahead of ourselves to fit through. Our lights revealed human remains stirred by our arrival. A severed limb in a white jacket sleeve greeted us, the Captain’s arm had thrown its last salute. Corpses floated around dressed in German seaman’s garb — oiled leather trousers, worn pullover sweaters — suspended like bad dreams. I read their faces: shock, anguish, resignation. (more…)
Tidal Playlist: Chair Kickers Music
A new playlist on the music streaming service Tidal features tracks from Duluth’s Chair Kickers Music label. It was assembled by Nathan Amundsen, whose music project Rivulets released two albums on the label. Listening to the tracks on the playlist in their entirety requires creating a Tidal account; otherwise it plays 30-second snippets.
Chair Kickers Music — sometimes rendered as “Chairkickers’ Music” or “Chairkicker’s Union Music” — was founded by Duluth’s Alan Sparhawk in 1999 and since then has put out 22 releases.