Postcard from the Car of the Aerial Bridge
This undated postcard from the V. O. Hammon Publishing Company shows Duluth’s Aerial Bridge circa 1905 to 1929, when a ferry car transferred people across the shipping canal.
This undated postcard from the V. O. Hammon Publishing Company shows Duluth’s Aerial Bridge circa 1905 to 1929, when a ferry car transferred people across the shipping canal.
On Saturday, June 29, Perfect Duluth Day will be 21 years old. Because the anniversary falls on a day loaded with events, we’ve decided to loosely piggyback on one of them and hold our little birthday party on Park Point Beach as the Park Point Art Fair wraps up. We hope you’ll join us.
In the aftermath of the 2024 Homegrown Music Festival a few band stickers that got crammed into jacket pockets and tossed onto shelves have been assembled into a tiny pile at the Perfect Duluth Day World Headquarters. Which got us to wondering how many there are in total, either stuck to something or crammed into drawers. It turns out, maybe not that many. The initial search at PDDHQ turned up only ten, but there might be more hiding in forgotten spots. So consider this post a work in progress, and please share images of the local band stickers you’ve got on your bumpers, lockers or the paper-towel dispensers of your favorite drinking establishments.
Featured here are postcards of Duluth & Iron Range Railroad locomotive No. 3, known as “Three Spot.” It has been on display at the D&IR Depot in Two Harbors since 1923.
It probably happens everywhere just as much as it happens in Duluth. Someone intentionally replaces the name of a well-known person, place or thing with a similar sounding word or words, almost always in a belittling way, and other people think it’s funny and repeat it.
There should be a list of those, right? Well, here it is.
When I’m out walking and I see a plastic bag stuck in a tree, I always point it out to anyone who might be around and say, “Hey look, a West Duluth owl.” It’s a stupid joke that doesn’t get much of a reaction, but hey, so am I.
Making cheesy remarks might be the best action in that situation. There’s a clump of ugly garbage stuck in a beautiful tree, and my options for how to deal with it are to climb the tree or use a long device of some kind to somehow remove the bag, ignore the situation altogether, or pretend like I wanted that bag to be there all along to support the comedy of life.
I have similar statements I repeat all the time. If my childhood friend is telling me about her cancer diagnosis, for example, I’ll say, “I told you not to go swimming downstream of the steel plant.”
The tragedy behind the comedy boils down to something pretty simple: I want a clean environment, but I know that’s unrealistic. It’s also confusing, because a clean environment contains a lot of dirt. And seriously, a clean planet and a polluted planet are made up of the same things; the difference is how those things are arranged.
This undated postcard, published by Cartwheel Company of St. Paul, shows five images of Duluth circa perhaps the early 1980s.
No fewer than five pennants hang on the wall in the photo on this undated postcard. Three are illegible, but one clearly indicates someone is a fan of Duluth. Another pennant represents the Withee Farmers Market of either 1912 or 1913. Withee is a village in Wisconsin, about 140 southeast of Duluth.
This postcard was mailed June 1, 1924 — 100 years ago today. It shows the St. Louis County Courthouse in Downtown Duluth, which opened in 1909.
This undated postcard, published by the E.C. Kropp Company, shows Passage Island Lighthouse and the rugged shore at Isle Royale on Lake Superior.
This year was the third in row that I lugged my heavy camera around during the Homegrown Music Festival and attempted to be a photographer. Above are the 86 best photos I could muster.
This 1964 newspaper clipping, for sale on eBay, shows Duluth television newscasters Walt Jensen and Don Wright at the WDSM-TV anchor desk.
WDSM was Duluth’s first VHF television station, launching in black and white on March 1, 1954. Color broadcasts started in 1965. In 1974 the call letters were changed to KBJR.
This cabinet card photo is marked “Rec’d May 5, 1894.” It’s not entirely clear what received might specifically refer to here, but with some confidence we can say this photo is at least 130 years old and someone received it precisely 130 years ago.
