March 29, 1919: Park Superintendent Cleveland announces dressing rooms for Minnesota Point beach

On this day in Duluth in 1919, Duluth Park Superintendent Captain Henry Cleveland announced the city would be installing two dressing rooms somewhere on Minnesota Point. At that point the city owned very little beachfront along the point, but that wasn’t stopping Duluthians from using it for public bathing. The News Tribune reported that “While the bathing season in Duluth is comparatively short, there are many occasion, especially on Sundays, when great crowds swarm Park Point.” Those crowds, the paper estimated, reached 10,000. Cleveland’s plan was to construct dressing rooms at Hartman Park between Forty-third and Forty-fourth Streets South, which he described as “the big bathing beach on the lake side of Park Point.” Cleveland explained that “bushes heretofore have been used as shields for impromptu dressing rooms.” He intended to use lumber salvaged from the former U.S. Thrift Stamp Sub Treasury, a temporary building constructed during World War I that sold stamps to finance the war. “From thrift stamps to bathing beaches!” the News Tribune proclaimed. The city council rejected his plan. It wasn’t until the 1930s, with the development of the Minnesota Point Recreation Area, that Duluth legally acquired the entire Minnesota Point beach front from the canal to the Superior Entry. The recreation facility stretched from 45th Street to the Barrens. As part of the development, in 1936 the city acquired the rights to the lakeshore between the canal and Hartman Park, opening to the public the entire length of the beach from the canal to the Barrens. Read a history of Minnesota Point as Duluth’s “Summertime Resort” here.

The Barrens of Minnesota Point looking north, photographed in 1936 by F. Rodney Paine. (Image: University of Minnesota Duluth Kathryn A. Martin Library Archives and Special Collections)