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On this day in 1962, Duluth native Henry C. Dworshack Jr. died in Washington, D.C. Dworshack was born in Duluth on August 29, 1894, and grew up on the East Hillside. His grandfather Joseph published the Duluth Volkesfreund, the first German newspaper published north of St. Paul. His father was a printer and later a…
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On this day in Duluth in 1888, Adam Gentles Thomson was born to Helen and Alexander D. Thomson, an important figure in Duluth’s grain trade and wholesale industry. Adam Thomson—known in newspapers as A. G. Thomson—attended Duluth public schools before heading east to boarding school at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. In 1911 he…
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On this day in 1914, native Duluthian Emily Schupp performed six dances at the Orpheum Theater. Schupp, had become a famous dancer since she left town roughly a decade earlier. From 1907 to 1910 she traveled throughout Europe, studying the folk dances of Russia, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Sweden, Norway, and Germany. In 1912 she moved…
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On this day in Duluth in 1919, the Riverside Golf Course officially opened. The community of Riverside had recently been built by McDougall-Duluth Shipbuilders to house workers at its shipyards, and it isn’t clear whether the course was constructed by McDougall-Duluth or a private group. Nine holes were laid out northeast of 85th Avenue West…
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On this day in Duluth in 1901, the Duluth News Tribune reported that a “ghost” was stalking around the Mitchell McClure sawmill in West Duluth, and that “terrified mill hands quit their jobs” because the spirit had caused a series of accidents during the night shift. The paper reported that the ghost didn’t actually haunt…
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On this day in Duluth in 1916, Minnesota novelist Sinclair Lewis and his wife Grace Livingston Hegger, an editor for Vogue magazine, pulled into town in an automobile and stayed for two weeks. They had left Lewis’s hometown of Sauk Center, Minnesota, the day before, and came to Duluth after first touring some Iron Range…
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On this day in Duluth in 1883, Duluth Mayor Joshua B. Culver died while visiting Buffalo, New York. Culver had first come to Duluth in the 1850s before leaving to fight for the Union in the American Civil War, where he rose to the rank of full colonel. He returned to Duluth and became a…
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On this Day in Duluth—and Superior—in 1927, the Arrowhead Bridge opened with a gala celebration. Technically a rolling lift bridge, the Arrowhead was built entirely of wood except for its steel 300-foot center lift span. It stretched eight hundred feet from Lesure Street on Grassy Point in West Duluth to Superior’s Belknap Street, extending U.S.…
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On this day in Duluth in 1936, the Marx Bothers performed “A Day at the Races” at Duluth’s Lyceum Theatre for the second night in a row. Groucho, Harpo, and Chico had arrived in Duluth on the 13th, greeted by Mayor Sam Snively and Harry W. Clark and J. R. Pratt, officers of the Duluth…
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On this day in Duluth in 1926, the Lincoln Hotel at 309–317 West Second Street opened with great fanfare. Designed by Harold Starin and A. Reinhold Melander, the Lincoln Hotel was called a “model of elegance” and “the last word in comfort” by the Duluth Herald. The hotel was four stories of red brick, with…
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