It looks like the postmark on this card to Emily Jackson of Albert Lea might be from the year 1909. The day is clearly July 26.
It looks like the postmark on this card to Emily Jackson of Albert Lea might be from the year 1909. The day is clearly July 26.
Aerial Bridge Over Ship Canal, Duluth, Minn.
Only one of its kind in the world; clear span, 400 ft.; clear height 136 ft.; total height above water 186 ft.; size of car 34×50 ft.; capacity of car, 125,000 lbs.; motive power, electricity; speed, 4 miles per hour.
Among man-made icons in Duluth, the most venerable of the them all is Historic Old Central High School, which opened in 1892 at Lake Avenue and East Second Street.
“Chester Park is popular both in summer and winter,” according to old postcard propaganda. “In it is located one of America’s highest ski jumps and also Chester Creek, one of several flowing thru the city in which trout may be caught. Duluth is the only city in the United States where trout fishing is possible within city limits.”
Well, we know the famous ski jumps came down in 2014, but there seems to be another fact in there worth examining. Was Duluth at one time really the only city with trout fishing? Prove it or debunk it, dear reader.
In the meantime, here are more snappy postcards …
This little gem is postmarked Sept. 18, 1905. Hopefully Ermina B. Smith of Menominee, Mich., believed it. It’s still true 110 years later.
What in tarnation is going on here? Well, this postcard image is clearly a photo studio gag and not a snapshot of two handsome fellows in a hot air balloon over Duluth.
The Arrowhead Bridge connected West Duluth to Superior’s Billing’s Park neighborhood across the St. Louis River for 57 years. Built by the Arrowhead Bridge Co., it opened on March 15, 1927. The company charged a toll to cross the bridge until 1963, when Minnesota and Wisconsin state officials paid $200,000 to make it a toll-free public bridge.
The Arrowhead Bridge was dismantled in 1985 after the opening of the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge.
Duluth’s first ore dock was built in 1893, just east of 34th Avenue West. The Duluth, Missabe and Northern Railway built several docks there for loading iron ore from the Iron Range for shipment to steel plants in the East. The first five docks were built of wood, which was gradually replaced by steel and concrete.
“Leaving Duluth” postcard image from Arcade studio, roughly a century ago.
This postcard, captioned “Balloon View Harbor, River and Natural Breakwater; Duluth to Left, Superior to Right” raises a few questions. Perhaps the most important one is, how did that tree on the left edge get so tall?
