August 18, 1929: Bear checks himself into the Hotel Duluth

On this day in Duluth in 1929, a black bear took up an extremely brief and violent residency in the Hotel Duluth. The bear had apparently followed a truck driven by Arvid Peterson, who traveled London Road to Superior Street on his way to downtown Duluth to deliver a load a fish harvested by fishermen on the North Shore  was driving down London Road with a truckload of fish fresh from the North Shore. Peterson first noticed the bear following him at Twenty-sixth Avenue East and London Road. The bear trailed him all the way to the corner of Superior Street and Third Avenue East—to the Hotel Duluth. Apparently the smell of food cooking in the hotel was a stronger incentive than raw fish, and the bear let himself into the hotel by smashing through a fifteen-foot plate-glass window. Inside, the scene became violent and included a night watchman throwing furniture, a local drunk wielding a hammer, and a sharpshooting police sergeant. The incident eventually led to the opening of a cocktail lounge that featured the bear itself (or, rather, its stuffed carcass) decorating a new cocktail lounge. Read the entire story here, and a history of the Hotel Duluth here.

The stuffed carcass of the black bear that broke into the Hotel Duluth August 18, 1929. (Image: Zenith City Press)