Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad Posts

Western Waterfront Trail will share corridor with excursion train

The Duluth News Tribune reports a plan has emerged to extend Duluth’s Western Waterfront Trail via a rail corridor, while maintaining a scenic train service that would continue to use the same route. The proposed future name of the trail is “Waabizheshikana” — pronounced: waa-bah-zhay-kuh-nuh — meaning “Marten way, path or road.”

Video Archive: Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad

This weekend (tentatively) the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad begins its 37th season of running 90-minute tours along the St. Louis River. This historical documentary was produced in 1983.

St. Louis River Story: Mike Casey

OneRiverMN-Logo-FC-BadgePeople in the St. Louis River watershed shared their connection to the river with WDSE-TV during the opening reception for The St. Louis River: Diverse Connections at the Duluth Art Institute. In this installment, Mike Casey, Jr. talks about how he became a volunteer with the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad.

Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad will run in 2016

LSMRLake Superior & Mississippi Railroad, which recently made VacationIdea magazine’s list of the “25 Best Things to See & Do in Duluth, Minnesota,” has been notified that the U.S. Steel clean up on the St. Louis River won’t start until the fall of 2016. So rail tours along the shoreline will return next summer.

Come on out and volunteer. You will meet some great people while having fun along the St. Louis River!

Save the LS&M Railroad for the enjoyment of future generations

Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad

The struggling Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad in West Duluth has persevered against all odds as a scenic, historic railroad since 1980 despite receiving virtually no public subsidies. Running on the very first tracks to enter Duluth, dating back to 1870, 145 unbroken years of history are on the line right now. A dedicated all-volunteer group, none of whom has ever received a paycheck, is keeping this history alive. The railroad costs the city virtually nothing, has proven to be largely self-sufficient, and is an irreplaceable treasure that needs community input in order to survive the massive cleanup now being planned for the U.S. Steel site near Morgan Park. The two newspaper columns linked below will shade things in a bit for you. Take a trip on the LS&M during one of the next six weekends or you just might miss your chance, forever.

Duluth Budgeteer: Save the train for future generations

Duluth News Tribune: Massive cleanup plan emerging for U.S. Steel site in Duluth

End of Stagecoaches in Duluth

On August 1, 1870, the St. Paul and Lake Superior Stagecoaches ceremoniously quit service with the opening of the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad. On this day, the first train arrived in Duluth from St. Paul, a roughly 150-mile trip that took 16 hours.

–Susan Marks, Historic Photos of Minnesota
Turner Publishing Company, 2009

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