March 27, 1926: Plan to expand Lake Shore Park appears in newspaper

On this Day in Duluth in 1926, Mayor Sam Snively and Park Superintendent F. Rodney Paine announced plans for the development of Lake Shore Park. Snively and Paine offered a new variation on the park’s expansion. They proposed a breakwater that would extend five hundred feet into the lake from the back of the Duluth Curling Club and run southwest approximately parallel with the shore for about 1,500 feet to a point opposite Eighth Avenue East. A road would be built on top of the breakwater, and the enclosed area would be filled to create more parkland. As in earlier proposals, boulders from Point of Rocks would be used to build the breakwater. Although city engineers did their best to blast away Point of Rocks, they eventually abandoned that project as too costly, eliminating the rock source for the breakwater and once again putting the expansion project on hold. Outside of relocating the Stone memorial fountain from the junction of Superior Street and London Road to within Lake Shore Park, the fourteen-acre public space remained relatively undeveloped. Paine’s plan for Lake Shore Park changed, however, when the Leif Erikson sailed into the Duluth harbor in June 1927. Read much more about Lake Shore Park, known today as Leif Erikson Park, here.

This drawing of Mayor Snively and Park Superintendent F. Rodney Paine’s proposed developments to Lake Shore Park appeared in the Duluth News Tribune March 27, 1927. (Image: Zenith City Press)