History
Ripped at the Duluth Athletic Club in 2004
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to the Duluth Athletic Club Bar & Grill, 402 W. First St., and composed this article for the October 2004 issue of the Ripsaw magazine. The Duluth Athletic Club closed in 2008 after it was flooded by a toilet overflow.]
Tonight, in an effort to mentally prepare you for the upcoming presidential election, I ask this question: Where in the Twin Ports would George W. Bush go to get drunk? The answer, of course, is nowhere. Bush doesn’t drink. He used to drink, but then he flip-flopped and turned into an evangelical traitor to the cause.
John Kerry, on the other hand, might go to the Duluth Athletic Club Bar & Grill. After all, the DAC is a nice, clean, all-American place where any political figure could spend a quiet night without any controversy whatsoever. And a rich sonuvabitch like Kerry could certainly afford the overpriced drinks. (more…)
Boylan Threatens Murder
One hundred years ago today — Oct. 25, 1924 — the Duluth Rip-saw newspaper published a front page story attacking Minnesota State Senator Mike Boylan. The article contributed to the 1925 creation of the Public Nuisance Law, also known as the “Minnesota Gag Law,” which made publishers of “malicious, scandalous and defamatory” newspapers or magazines guilty of creating a public nuisance, and allowed judges to stop the publication of those periodicals. A restraining order was placed on the Rip-saw in 1926. Publisher John L. Morrison fell ill soon after and died.
In 1931 the gag law was challenged by Jay Near, publisher of the Saturday Press in Minneapolis. The Supreme Court ruled the law violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects the freedom of the press. (more…)
PDD Geoguessr #28: Haunted Duluth
When I developed the image, two specters became visible behind me (Photo by David James with Photoshop Generative Fill)
With Halloween approaching, this post takes a close look at the tales of hauntings around Duluth, presenting a classification system for the four different types of haunted Duluth locations. It concludes with a Geoguessr challenge made up of five spooky Duluth photospheres. (more…)
Postcard from Lake View Tea and Dining Room
This undated postcard shows the Lake View Tea and Dining Room at 730 E. Superior St., “on the shore of Lake Superior where you can view the large steamers coming and going.” (more…)
PDD Geoguessr #27: Duluth’s Former Telephone Exchanges
Photo of the Hemlock Exchange in 1920 by Hugh McKenzie. (Photo from the Northeast Minnesota Collections of the Kathryn A. Martin Library)
A year after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, George W. Coy set up the first telephone exchange. Making a call to a specific phone required plugging the right cord into the right socket, and that required a person working out of an exchange building. Photos from the Minnesota Digital Library show the Duluth neighborhood exchanges that were operated by the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company in 1920. This post discusses the role of telephone exchanges as a source of employment for women in Duluth with a Geoguessr challenge that reveals what those telephone exchanges look like now. (more…)
Postcard from the Incline
This undated postcard shows Duluth’s Incline Railway, which operated from 1891 to 1939. The tram system carried passengers from a housing development at the top of the hillside into the downtown along Seventh Avenue West.
PDD Geoguessr #26: Duluth City Limits
Arriving in Duluth (Photo by Matthew James)
“Twenty-six miles long and an average of 2-1/2 miles wide, Duluth is squeezed between rocky bluffs and the waterfront of Lake Superior and the St. Louis River,” a National Geographic reporter wrote when describing the city in 1949. This post describes some of the stranger contours of our long and narrow city with a Geoguessr challenge at the end to test your knowledge of the city limits. (more…)
PDD Quiz: Superior School Daze
Hit the books and test your smarts with this week’s quiz about Superior schools. (And check out a similarly-themed PDD quiz on historic Duluth schools here).
The next PDD current events quiz will be published on Sept. 29. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Sept. 25. (more…)
Postcard from the Willard Motel
This undated postcard shows the Willard Munger Inn circa 1970, when it was simply the “Willard Motel.” It is still in operation in Duluth’s Norton Park neighborhood. (more…)
Ripped at Tom’s Burned Down Café in 2004
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to the Town of La Pointe on Madeline Island and composed this article for the September 2004 issue of the Ripsaw magazine.]
Holy crap is it a beautiful night out here on Madeline Island. It’s warm, with a cool breeze coming off the lake, and I’m sprawled out on the sidewalk polishing off a 40 of Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor and watching the Northern Lights burn across the entire sky, like the good Lord himself is vomiting white Russians all over the universe. I’m thankful to be alive. I’m lucky to be alive, too, as there are a lot of ways to die on this island, all of them alcohol related.
The downtown La Pointe area is small and concentrated, so it’s not unusual that a cop car has cruised by me a few times now. Each time I wave, and the cop waves back, because everything is fine; the speed limit here is 40 oz. See, unlike most of the United States of America, it’s perfectly legal on Madeline Island to walk around town with a beer in your hand, as if you live in a free country. You can carry your bottled or canned brew from one bar to the next, or just sit on a hollow log in front of the Chamber of Commerce and chug away. This place has everything Duluth has an ordinance against. (more…)
Old World Lakewood Pump House
A fun local architecture channel to be aware of, Arches and Columns. The latest video is about the pump house.
Downtown Duluth 1964
This photo of Downtown Duluth, found on the French-language edition of Wikipedia, is dated Sept. 1, 1964. It shows East Superior Street from Lake Avenue looking northeast with the Hotel Duluth at center frame. Note the NorShor Theatre still had its tower marquee, which was dismantled in 1967. (more…)
Postcard from the Great Northern Power Company Dam
This postcard, published by the Duluth Photo Engraving Company, was mailed 100 years ago today — Aug. 30, 1924. It shows the Great Northern Power Company Dam, now known as the Thomson Dam and operated by Minnesota Power. (more…)
Literary History of Duluth: Joel Carter
Another thrift store find: I would love it if anyone with stories about this book, about its poetry or the art or the press, would post below or email dbeard @ d.umn.edu.
Literary History of Duluth: Savage Press
I’m still slowly writing the literary history of Duluth and would love if anyone with stories of Savage Press would post below or email me at dbeard @ d.umn.edu.
Victims of the Wreck of the Wilson Should Have a Memorial
A recent push to place a memorial to the Edmund Fitzgerald on Barker’s Island got me thinking about the local oft-forgotten wreck of the Thomas Wilson. My 1995 edition of the book Shipwrecks of Lake Superior (edited by James R. Marshall) calls the Wilson “Duluth’s doorstep shipwreck.” The author of the Wilson chapter is legendary local scuba diver Paul von Goertz, who says on page 75 that “The Thomas Wilson ‘sails the bottom’ less than a mile from the ship canal.” A 308-foot whaleback steamer loaded with ore, the Wilson got T-boned in 1902 and sank within three minutes.
What bothers me about the wreck is that it may hold the remains of seven crew members:
“Of the 20 men that comprised the Wilson’s crew, nine were lost. Only two of the nine bodies were recovered. The remaining seven are entombed to this day in the hull of the Wilson … [the wreck] remains in pretty good shape …. To the best of my knowledge, entry has not been gained into the turret housing the boiler room. A safe guess would be that the men entombed in the wreck might be found in the boiler room, as this was the compartment nearest the actual point of collision. The preservation qualities of ice cold Lake Superior have protected the old wreck well … On one dive, I examined some wooden planking near the stern. The wood was not in the least rotted and even the putty in the seams was intact … One could safely speculate that the cold water would also preserve the remains of the seven sailors entombed in her belly.” (Lake Superior Shipwrecks, pp. 76-77) (more…)
Postcard from Coal Docks in the Duluth Harbor
This undated postcard, published by Zenith Interstate News Company, shows coal docks in the Duluth Harbor. There is no caption on the back identifying the name of the docks, and the image is an illustration that might not exactly depict reality, but it is likely meant to represent the Clarkson Coal & Dock Company.
PDD Geoguessr #24: Indigenous Land
A gas station on the Fond du Lac Reservation (Photo by Matthew James)
In 2019, the University of Minnesota Duluth became the first in the University of Minnesota system to adopt a land acknowledgment, a formal statement recognizing that UMD “is located on the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people.” The land acknowledgement references the 1854 treaty in which representatives of the Anishinaabe ceded some of their land to settlement (while retaining certain rights on that land) and came to an agreement about which areas would be governed under tribal sovereignty. This Geoguessr challenge briefly examines the significance of the 1854 treaty and includes significant sites from reservations throughout Northern Minnesota. (more…)
Finding Minnesota: Taconite Harbor
WCCO-TV‘s John Lauritsen examines the rise and fall of Taconite Harbor in Cook County.
The Slice: 114 Years of Split Rock Lighthouse
Split Rock Lighthouse‘s 114th anniversary was celebrated on July 26 with special tours and a lighting of the beacon. The annual anniversary event commemorates the first lighting of the lighthouse’s beacon, which took place on July 31, 1910.
In its series The Slice, PBS North presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
The 350th Anniversary of the Battle of Seneffe
A monument to the battle at the Castle of Seneffe. (Photo by Matthew James)
Three hundred and fifty years ago, Daniel Greysolon Sieur du Luth first met Father Louis Hennepin in the aftermath of the Battle of Seneffe. While this battle is often listed as a footnote in the history of French colonialism in Minnesota, it was one of the most significant battles of the Franco-Dutch War. On Aug. 11, 1674, French troops fought in southern Belgium against an allied army of Dutch, German and Spanish soldiers. The battle shaped European history and the meeting of Du Luth and Hennepin at the site of that battle led to a story that, while almost certainly false, endures as one the foundational tales of Minnesota history. (more…)
Streets of Duluth: Classic Street Photography from 1968 to 1972
The Duluth street photography of D. M. Martin recently became available on YouTube in slideshow format. The images were shot between 1968 and 1972, and have appeared in several art shows in recent decades, including two in Duluth: Chasing Cartier-Bresson: Duluth, Superior & Minneapolis 1968-1972, at the Tweed Museum of Art in 2000, and D. R. Martin: Duluth Street Photographer at the Red Herring Lounge in 2016. (more…)
Mystery Photo: Two Dudes in Duluth
From G. E. Sackett’s Owl Studio at 6 E. Superior St. in Duluth circa 1915 comes this photo of two unknown men.
PDD Geoguessr #23: World Cities and Their Northern Minnesota Namesakes
The city center of Groningen, The Netherlands, not to be confused with Groningen Township, 70 miles south of Duluth (Photo by Matthew James)
There’s a lot of Minnesota history to be found in the names on a map. Some places, like Iron Junction, reflect the industry that created the town. Many names come from Anishinaabemowin, like Mahnomen, derived from manoomin, meaning wild rice. And some city names both reflect their primary industry and come from Anishinaabemowin, like Biwabik, which comes from the Ojibwe word for iron. This Geoguessr challenge looks specifically at places in Minnesota that took their names from locations from around the world. (more…)