On this day in Duluth in 1891, the wooden packet steamer Winslow was destroyed by fire while docked at Duluth. The 220-foot propellor-driven vessel had been delivering packages and passengers on the Great Lakes since she launched in Cleveland in 1863. The day before she burned she had run aground on the Lake Superior shore…

On this day in Duluth in 1932, the City Land Company officially presented the first nine holes of the Lester Park Golf course to the city of Duluth. The golf course was the brainchild of park superintendent F. Rodney Paine, who had overseen the development of Enger Park Golf Course in 1926, a project which…

On this day across the bay in 1996, Superior, Wisconsin, Mayor Margaret Ciccone designated the restoration of Fairlawn Mansion as the city’s official sesquicentennial project. The Queen Anne Victorian mansion was built in 1891 by Martin and Grace Pattison; Martin Pattison was a lumber baron and mining executive and served three terms as Superior’s mayor.…

On this day in Duluth in 1906, Mayor Marcus B. Cullum declared that a public park along the Lake Superior Shore between 9th and 13th Avenues East had been secured. The previous year Cullum, got behind the idea for the park, put forth by Louis Loeb. It involved purchasing land from the Northern Pacific Railway,…

On this day in Duluth in 1908, the Common Council passed an ordinance that “provides for the leasing of the new municipal court on the second floor of the building now being erected adjoining the police station.” Since 1889 Duluth’s municipal court was in the Michigan Street level of City Hall, but as Duluth continue…

On this day in Duluth in 1921, the Duluth News Tribune printed the prediction of a Park Department employee for a “late snow fall and mild winter, basing his prediction on the sudden re-appearance of mosquitoes which had turned in for the winter.” The man, reported to be 75 years old, made the prediction while…

On this day in Duluth in 1911, the Aerial Transfer Bridge was knocked out of commission, scaring passengers and causing at least one Park Point resident to cry foul. Indeed, four Park Point residents had been “nearly frightened out of their boots,” according to the Duluth News Tribune, when the ferry car abruptly stopped and…

On this day in in 1857, Registrar Samuel Clark of the Buchanan Land office sent the first message from the newly established outpost in the wilderness of Lake Superior’s North Shore to his boss T. A. Hendricks in Washington D.C.—and he was not happy. The previous year the town of Buchanan—platted by W. G. Cowell and…

On this day in Duluth in 1910, the Duluth News Tribune reported that national officials were concerned that the pompadour hair style would make a comeback, something they would consider “dangerous.” A. C. Mendell, district organizer of the Journeyman Barbers’ International Union of American, told the paper that “all barbers dread the coming of the…

On this day in Duluth in 1971, the Duluth-Superior Bridge, aka the “High Bridge,” was renamed in honor of Minnesota’s 8th District congressman, John A. Blatnik. Built to replace the Interstate Bridge, the 7,975-foot Duluth-Superior Bridge, which stretches between Duluth’s Rice’s Point to Superior’s Conner’s Point, first opened in 1961. Its construction resulted in the…