On this day in Duluth in 1891, between 4,000 and 7,000 Duluthians showed up at a construction site to watch workman lay the cornerstone for Duluth’s Central High School, known today as “Old Central.” School Board president W. C. White acted as master of ceremonies and Reverend C. C. Salter led a prayer asking for…

On this day in Duluth in 1928, the beloved Steamship America wrecked at Isle Royale. The America left Grand Marais the previous evening for Isle Royale to drop off passengers at the Singer Hotel Dock on Washington Island before heading to Port Arthur (today’s Thunder Bay), Ontario. In the early morning hours of June 7,…

On this day in Duluth in 1889, the newly formed Board of Park Commissioners approved a resolution to start work on Terrace Parkway, later called Rogers Boulevard, Carriage Drive, and, beginning in 1929, Skyline Parkway. The roadway was the lynch-pin in William K. Rogers’s grand plan for Duluth’s Park system. In a letter to his…

On this day in Duluth in 1890, Duluth Bishop James McGolrick gave a sermon the Duluth News Tribune reported was full of “remarkable utterances.” The newspaper’s headline asked “Is This Prophetic?” In a sermon that lasted almost an hour, the Bishop attacked Protestant influence on American public schools. He said that because “common school system”…

On this day in 1828, William Wallace Kingsbury was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania. After attending school in Athens, Pennsylvania, and working as a surveyor, he struck out for the frontier in 1852, settling in the townships that would later become Duluth. He was a boyhood friend of novelist Stephen Foster, who said that as a…

On this day in Duluth in 1984, Duluth’s historic 1912 Duluth Curling Club at 1338 London Road was destroyed by fire. An employee at the Perkins restaurant across the street from the Curling Club noticed the blaze and called in the fire. According to Duluth Fire Department historian Jarry Keppers, “The fire department responded to…

On this day in Duluth in 1874, the light atop the southern pier of the Duluth Ship Canal was lit for the first time. The “lighthouse” was a rather simple affair—a wooden pyramid tower capped with an octagonal cast-iron lantern housing a fifth order Fresnel Lens (a lens developed specifically for navigational lights by French…

On this day in 1869, Luke Marvin and John Hunter established the First Presbyterian Church of Duluth in what was then Duluth Township, with parishioners taking turns hosting services in their homes. Although theirs was not the first church building in Duluth (that honor belong’s to the 1869 St. Paul’s Episcopal) First Presbyterian was the…

On this day in 1856, Charles Chester established a homestead along Chester Creek above what is today Fourth Street. Very little is known about Chester, except that the creek was named in his honor because he was the first to build along it. In Woodbridge & Pardee’s 1910 “History of Duluth and St. Louis County”…

On this day in 1912, it was a tough day for animals in the Zenith City. During a memorial Day parade in downtown Duluth, a team of two horses hitched to an unattended sprinkling wagon (at that time water was sprayed on the street to keep down dust and wash away horse urine) owned by…