Duluth Deep Dive #9: The Third Largest City in Minnesota
The population of Duluth, Bloomington, and Rochester over time (Source: U.S. Census Data)
A recent YouTube video on Duluth restaurants described Duluth as the third-largest city in Minnesota — a statement that has been true at various points in the state’s history. Since Minnesota became the 32nd state in 1858, Minneapolis and St. Paul have consistently been its two largest cities. Third place, however, has been considerably less stable. This Duluth Deep Dive takes a closer look at the cities that have held the #3 spot, using aerial images to show how these cities have developed over time. (more…)
Ripped at the Pickwick in 2000
[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-five years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to Duluth’s venerable Pickwick, and composed this article for the Oct. 4, 2000 edition of the Ripsaw newspaper. The Pickwick’s bar underwent significant renovations in 2010 and now features televisions.]
Call me romantic, but when my special lady friend said she was growing tired of seedy dives, I decided to treat her to a classy night at the Pickwick, where the two of us could get ripped in style.
It shouldn’t really be that difficult to make a bar a comfortable place to imbibe, yet it’s surprising how many truly annoying bars there are in this area. The Pickwick has it just right: extremely dim lighting, dark wood paneling, good furniture, no neon beer lights, no tacky antique signs, no TVs. And even though the room is decorated with taxidermy, it’s as tasteful and interesting as taxidermy can be. The only things lacking are a good sound system and a room full of couches and armchairs. But since the bar serves mainly as an area for diners to wait for tables on busy nights, it’s extremely unlikely that the Pickwick will be booking live music or ordering La-Z-Boys anytime soon. (more…)
Selective Focus: Fall Colors 2025
The annual tradition of overloading Instagram with autumn scenery is well underway. Visit the Minnesota Department of Natural Resource’s Fall Color Finder to find areas of the state awash with fall colors.
Featured here is Perfect Duluth Day’s collection of select images from Instagram showcasing nature’s 2025 palette. (more…)
Save Our Signs: Grand Portage Monument and Voyageurs Park
My colleague is curating photos for the Save Our Signs project, and just heard Grand Portage National Monument and Voyageurs National Park have basically no signs recorded yet. (more…)
Postcard from the Duluth Children’s Museum and Art Center
This undated postcard shows the Duluth Children’s Museum at 1832 E. Second St., its home from 1936 to 1975. The house was built in 1902 for Archibald Mark Chisholm, the namesake of the city of Chisholm. He discovered the mine there at the turn of the 20th century and laid out the townsite. (more…)
The Book of the North: Part 1
The Book of the North is a collaborative book-making project using premodern techniques to experience how the information technologies of the past bind together communities and ecologies, and create a vision for a more sustainable future.
The project is being led by Dr. Krista Sue-Lo Twu, University of Minnesota Imagine Arts, Humanities, and Design chair. The process can be followed through various social medica platforms.
DuLilith Fest brings fem-forward spirit to Duluth’s Chester Bowl
Gaelynn Lea is a featured performer at DuLilith Fest, Oct. 4 at Chester Bowl Park.
Yoga in the grass, guitars echoing off the ski slopes, the smell of food trucks drifting through Duluth’s Chester Bowl Park and voices rising together in song are the vision behind DuLilith Fest, a one-day celebration of women in music happening Saturday, Oct. 4. The local event draws its name and inspiration from a traveling music festival popular in the late 1990s. (more…)
Minnesota Historia: The Laurentian Divide
The Laurentian Divide is a continental divide that crosses some of Minnesota’s most stunning landscapes. But what does one do with such a geographical gem? Mine it? Ski it? Or build a tourist attraction on top of it? (The answer is all three.)
Minnesota Historia is a PBS North web series dedicated to Minnesota’s quirky past. It is hosted by Hailey Eidenschink-Ziebol and produced/edited/written by Mike Scholtz.
PDD Quiz: September 2025
Wrap up another month with this week’s current events quiz!
A Halloween-y quiz creeps your way on Oct. 12; please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Oct. 9. (more…)
Leta Powell Drake Compilation: The Notorious L.P.D.
Duluth native Leta Powell Drake began her broadcasting career at KDAL-TV after graduating from Morgan Park High School in 1956. She went on to host and produce more than 10,000 TV shows at KOLN/KGIN-TV in Lincoln, Nebraska.
She could be … shall we say … a little bit blunt. As a result, clips of her celebrity interviews have become popular on the internet in recent years. And for a double-dose of Duluth, the montage above includes an exchange with Telly Savalas, star of the classic “Duluth, who loves ya baby?” TV spot of 1984. (more…)
Wild Horses – “When I Was Younger”
The latest single from Grand Rapids-based Americana band Wild Horses is “When I Was Younger.” The music video was directed by Cooper Baumgartner.
Superior Porchfest 2025 Recap Video
The 2025 season of Superior Porchfest continued the mission of the nonprofit Siggy’s Musical Garden to build community with music, arts and fun. This year’s recap video features the music of Steve Solkela and Cars & Trucks, with video clips from throughout the summer of shows.
Porchfest is a free, family-friendly music and art series in which attendees can bring a blanket or lawn chair, pack a picnic and/or simply stop by to enjoy the show. The performances are typically held either on a residential porch or at a city park.
Minnesota Historia: The Leif Erikson Viking Ship
Minnesota Historia talks to 107-year-old Lilly Haldorson, who remembers the day the Leif Erikson sailed into Duluth’s Harbor in 1927. The ship was named for the famous Viking explorer, but its captain, Gerhard Folgero, was an unforgettable character in his own right.
Minnesota Historia is a PBS North web series dedicated to Minnesota’s quirky past. It is hosted by Hailey Eidenschink-Ziebol and produced/edited/written by Mike Scholtz.
Postcard from St. Mary’s Hospital
This undated postcard, circa the turn of the 20th century, shows St. Mary’s Hospital at 404 E. Third St. This was Duluth’s second St. Mary’s building; the first was in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The Third Street building opened in 1898. It was demolished in 1967 and replaced by a new wing of the expanding hospital.
Later known as St. Mary’s Medical Center, it merged with the Duluth Clinic in 1997 to form the SMDC Health System. Miller-Dwan Medical Center joined in 2001. The system became Essentia Health in 2004. Its network now includes hospitals, clinics and other health-care facilities throughout Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin.
The Days That Sustain Us
It’s about nine in the morning. I’m sitting on a bench at the Rose Garden. Enjoying the sun, slight breeze and expecting the temperature to reach the mid-seventies. Truly a beautiful day. Days like this, when I can be outside, definitely sustain me.
About a month ago, on Aug. 17, Mayor Roger Reinert wrote a commentary for the Minnesota Star Tribune entitled “We’re actively shaping our city’s future.” In that commentary, Reinert stated, “Duluth is growing and thriving exactly because we are taking the deliberate and measurable action steps necessary to secure the future of our beloved Zenith City.”
Within several weeks of that piece coming out, I heard and confirmed that the mayor had decided not to hire a full-time sustainability officer to replace the former officer, Mindy Granley, who resigned in February. In fact, Reinart announced that the city was no longer looking for anyone to fill that position and the sustainability initiative was not a top priority.
In reflecting upon the mayor’s decision, I thought of something I read in Jordan Peterson’s book Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life. Jordan wrote, “It appears that the meaning that most effectively sustains life is to be found in the adoption of responsibility.” So I had to ask myself, was Reinert being a responsible mayor and public servant when he decided to not hire a sustainability officer. (more…)
R.I.P. Lakeside Professional Building
Demolition of the Lakeside Professional Building began in August. (Photo by Gina Temple-Rhodes)
The Lakeside Professional Building, formerly St. Michael’s School, is no more. St. Michael’s Catholic Church announced in December that the building at 4915 E. Superior St. had been deemed structurally deficient and would be demolished. The tenants, which included Gabriel’s Used Bookstore and the Sami Cultural Center, cleared out in the spring. Gabriel’s had operated out of the building’s basement since 1994.
Original Hibbing Memorial Building opened in 1925
The Hibbing Memorial Building opened 100 years ago today — Sept. 18, 1925 — as a memorial to veterans of World War I. It included a hockey rink, eight curling rinks, a bowling alley, an auditorium and veterans’ club quarters. It was destroyed by fire in 1933 and rebuilt in 1935. (more…)
Historic property tour showcases Duluth’s west side
The Duluth Preservation Alliance will feature the west side of the city during its annual Historic Properties Tour on Sunday, Sept. 21.
An annual historic home tour that typically showcases turn-of-the-century mansions anchored in Duluth’s eastern hillside will instead feature small-scale, hidden gems lovingly restored on the west side of town.
The 2025 Duluth Preservation Alliance Historic Properties Tour highlights four private homes and two public buildings during its Sunday, Sept. 21 event called “West Side Story.” Ticket holders will be able to roam each property and take in its history, architecture and restoration work from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (more…)
Minnesota Historia: Judy Garland’s Minnesota
Judy Garland is known around the world for her role in The Wizard of Oz. But few know about her life in Minnesota. Minnesota Historia visits the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids to explore her childhood and return visits to the state.
Minnesota Historia is a PBS North web series dedicated to Minnesota’s quirky past. It is hosted by Hailey Eidenschink-Ziebol and produced/edited/written by Mike Scholtz.
Mini Skirt
Intergalactic glamour and out-of-this-world fashions are featured in this montage edited by Duluth’s Jean Kirwan set to music by Esquivel.
PDD Quiz: Back to School
Hit the books for this edition of the PDD Quiz, which tests your knowledge of Duluth school buildings that have been adaptively reused as dwellings. For more information on historic Duluth schools, check out this PDD post and the Minnesota Digital Library, both of which were invaluable resources for this quiz.
The next PDD Quiz, on Sept. 28, will cover this month’s headlines. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Sept. 24. (more…)
Postcard from the Lyceum Theatre in 1915
This postcard was mailed 110 years ago today — Sept. 14, 1915. The Lyceum Theater opened for performances at 423 W. Superior St. in 1891 and became a movie house in 1921. It was demolished in 1966 and replaced by the KDLH-TV studio. The KDLH building was demolished in 2015 and replaced by the Maurices headquarters. (more…)
Duluth 75 Years Later
[Editor’s note: Duluth was featured in The Saturday Evening Post in a 1949 article written by Arthur W. Baum. Seventy-five years later, in 2024, Baum’s great-great nephew, Jordan Haedtler, began gathering his thoughts for an update, which appears below. Haedtler has recently printed both essays, as well as another essay about Duluth and climate change, in a book that can be ordered through Google Forms.]
The citizens of nearly every hub city or port city or twin city must look at this moment of rapid planetary warming ponderously. Many seaside cities worry anxiously at their fate amidst rising oceans, while tourist destinations fret about the damage to their core infrastructure, and bustling business hubs nervously eye the economic forecasts. This makes the case of gritty and resilient Duluth — with its aging housing stock dotting a hillside overlooking the western terminus of the Great Lakes — unique.
For Duluth has not had to wonder about its role in the climate crisis or desire outside attention on the subject since April 15, 2019. That was the day Harvard professor Jesse Keenan came to the city to deliver a lecture called “Destination Duluth,” in which Keenan emphasized the potential for Duluth, sitting as it does on the edge of all that fresh water, to rebrand itself as “Climate Proof,” attracting new residents after decades of economic stagnation. (more…)