Duluth, Minnesota, United States

🇺🇸 Duluth is a port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County. Duluth forms a metropolitan area with neighbouring Superior, Wisconsin; together they are called the Twin Ports.

Located on Lake Superior in Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, the city is a hub for cargo shipping. Commodities shipped from the Port of Duluth include coal, iron ore, grain, limestone, cement, salt, wood pulp, steel coil, and wind turbine components. Duluth is south of the Iron Range and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Duluth is named after Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, the area's first known European explorer. It is Minnesota's fifth-largest city. Duluth forms a metropolitan area with neighboring Superior, Wisconsin. The two cities are commonly called the Twin Ports.

Situated on the north shore of Lake Superior at the westernmost point of the Great Lakes, Duluth is the largest metropolitan area, the second-largest city and the largest U.S. city on the lake, and is accessible to the Atlantic Ocean 2,300 miles (3,700 km) away via the Great Lakes Waterway and St. Lawrence Seaway. The Port of Duluth is the world's farthest inland port accessible to oceangoing ships, and by far the largest and busiest port on the Great Lakes. The port is among the top 20 U.S. ports by tonnage.

A tourist destination for the Midwest, Duluth has the nation's only all-freshwater aquarium, the Great Lakes Aquarium; the Aerial Lift Bridge, which is adjacent to Canal Park and spans the Duluth Ship Canal into the Duluth–Superior harbor; and Minnesota Point (known locally as Park Point), the world's longest freshwater baymouth bar, spanning 6 miles (10 km). The city is also the starting point for vehicle trips touring the North Shore of Lake Superior toward Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

History The Ojibwe occupied a historic settlement at Onigamiinsing ("at the little portage"), the portage across Minnesota Point between Lake Superior and western St. Louis Bay, which forms Duluth's harbor. For both the Ojibwe and the Dakota, interaction with Europeans during the contact period revolved around the fur trade and related activities.

According to Ojibwe oral history, Spirit Island, near the Spirit Valley neighborhood, was the "Sixth Stopping Place", where the northern and southern branches of the Ojibwe Nation came together and proceeded to their "Seventh Stopping Place", near the present city of La Pointe, Wisconsin. The "Stopping Places" were the places the Native Americans occupied during their westward migration as the Europeans overran their territory.

Exploration and fur trade Several factors brought fur traders to the Great Lakes in the early 17th century. The fashion for beaver hats in Europe generated demand for pelts. French trade for beaver in the lower St. Lawrence River led to the depletion of the animals in the region by the late 1630s, so the French searched farther west for new resources and new routes, making alliances with the Native Americans along the way to trap and deliver their furs.

Étienne Brûlé is credited with the European discovery of Lake Superior before 1620. Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers explored the Duluth area, Fond du Lac (Bottom of the Lake) in 1654 and again in 1660. The French soon established fur posts near Duluth and in the far north where Grand Portage became a major trading center. The French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, whose name is sometimes anglicized as "DuLuth", explored the St. Louis River in 1679.

After 1792 and the independence of the United States, the North West Company established several posts on Minnesota rivers and lakes, and in areas to the west and north-west, for trading with the Ojibwe, the Dakota, and other native tribes. The first post was where Superior, Wisconsin, later developed. Known as Fort St. Louis, the post became the headquarters for North West's new Fond du Lac Department. It had stockaded walls, two houses of 40 feet (12 m) each, a shed of 60 feet (18 m), a large warehouse, and a canoe yard. Over time, Indian peoples and European Americans settled nearby, and a town gradually developed at this point.

In 1808, German-born John Jacob Astor organized the American Fur Company. The company began trading at the Head of the Lakes in 1809. In 1817, it erected a new headquarters at present-day Fond du Lac on the St. Louis River. There, portages connected Lake Superior with Lake Vermilion to the north and with the Mississippi River to the south. After creating a powerful monopoly, Astor got out of the business about 1830, as the trade was declining. But active trade carried on until the failure of the fur trade in the 1840s. European fashions changed, and many American areas were getting over-trapped, with game declining.

In 1832 Henry Schoolcraft visited the Fond du Lac area and wrote of his experiences with the Ojibwe Indians there. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow based the Song of Hiawatha, his epic poem relating the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman, on Schoolcraft's writings.

Natives signed two Treaties of Fond du Lac with the United States in the present neighborhood of Fond du Lac in 1826 and 1847, in which the Ojibwe ceded land to the American government. As part of the Treaty of Washington (1854) with the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa, the United States set aside the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation upstream from Duluth near Cloquet, Minnesota.

Permanent settlement As European Americans continued to settle and encroach on Ojibwe lands, the U.S. government made a series of treaties, executed between 1837 and 1889, that expropriated vast areas of tribal lands for their use and relegated the Native American peoples to a number of small reservations. Interest in the area was piqued in the 1850s by rumors of copper mining. A government land survey in 1852, followed by a treaty with local tribes in 1854, secured wilderness for gold-seeking explorers, sparked a land rush, and led to the development of iron ore mining in the area. The 1854 Ojibwe Land Cession Treaty would force the Ojibwe onto what are now known as the Fond du Lac and Grand Portage Reservations, though some land rights such as hunting and fishing were retained.

Around the same time, newly constructed channels and locks in the East permitted large ships to access the area. A road connecting Duluth to the Twin Cities was also constructed. Eleven small towns on both sides of the St. Louis River were formed, establishing Duluth's roots as a city.

By 1857, copper resources were scarce and the area's economic focus shifted to timber harvesting. A nationwide financial crisis, the Panic of 1857, caused most of the city's early pioneers to leave. A history of Duluth written in 1910 relates, "Of the handful remaining in 1859 four men were unemployed and one of those was a brewer. Capital idea; build a brewery. The absence of malt and hops and barley did not at all embarrass those stout-hearted settlers". The water for brewing was obtained from a stream that emptied into Lake Superior that came to be called Brewery Creek, as it is still known today. While the brewery "was not a pecuniary success", a few decades later it became the Fitger Brewing Company.

The opening of the canal at Sault Ste. Marie in 1855 and the contemporaneous announcement of the railroads' approach had made Duluth the only port with access to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Soon the lumber industry, railroads and mining were all growing so quickly that the influx of workers could hardly keep up with demand, and storefronts popped up almost overnight. By 1868, business in Duluth was booming. In a Fourth of July speech Dr. Thomas Preston Foster, the founder of Duluth's first newspaper, coined the expression "The Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas".

In 1869–70, Duluth was the fastest-growing city in the country and was expected to surpass Chicago in only a few years. When Jay Cooke, a wealthy Philadelphia land speculator, convinced the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad to create an extension from St. Paul to Duluth, the railroad opened areas due north and west of Lake Superior to iron ore mining. Duluth's population on New Year's Day of 1869 consisted of 14 families; by the Fourth of July, 3,500 people were present to celebrate.

In the first Duluth Minnesotian printed on August 24, 1869, the editor placed the following notice on the editorial page: Newcomers should comprehend that Duluth is at present a small place, and hotel and boarding room accommodation is extremely limited. However, lumber is cheap and shanties can be built. Everyone should bring blankets and come prepared to rough it at first.

In 1873, Cooke's empire crumbled and the stock market crashed, and Duluth almost disappeared from the map. But by the late 1870s, with the continued boom in lumber and mining and with the railroads completed, Duluth bloomed again. By the turn of the century, it had almost 100,000 inhabitants, and was again a thriving community with small-business loans, commerce and trade flowing through the city. Mining continued in the Mesabi Range and iron was shipped east to mills in Ohio, a trade continuing into the 20th century.

"The Untold Delights of Duluth" Early doubts about the Duluth area's potential were voiced in "The Untold Delights of Duluth", a speech U.S. Representative J. Proctor Knott of Kentucky gave in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 27, 1871. His speech opposing the St. Croix and Superior Land Grant lampooned Western boosterism, portraying Duluth as an Eden in fantastically florid terms. The speech has been reprinted in collections of folklore and humorous speeches and is regarded as a classic. The nearby city of Proctor, Minnesota, is named for Knott.

Duluth's unofficial sister city, Duluth, Georgia, got its name in 1871, shortly after Knott's speech gained national attention. Prominent Georgia newspaperman and politician Evan P. Howell was called upon to make remarks at the dedication of a new railroad line into Howell's Crossing, a village named for his grandfather. Howell humorously suggested that the community be called "Duluth" instead, and townspeople agreed.

Proctor Knott is sometimes credited with characterizing Duluth as the "zenith city of the unsalted seas", but the honor for that coinage belongs to journalist Thomas Preston Foster, speaking at a Fourth of July picnic in 1868.

History: 20th century During the 20th century, the Port of Duluth was for a time the busiest port in the United States, surpassing even New York City in gross tonnage. Lake freighters carried iron ore through the Great Lakes to processing plants in Illinois and Ohio. Ten newspapers, six banks and an 11-story skyscraper, the Torrey Building, were founded and built. As of 1905, Duluth was said to be home to the most millionaires per capita in the United States.

In 1907, U.S. Steel announced that it would build a $5 million plant in the area. Although steel production did not begin until 1915, predictions held that Duluth's population would rise to 200,000–300,000. Along with the Duluth Works steel plant, US Steel developed Morgan Park, as a company town for steel workers. It is now a city neighborhood within Duluth.

The Diamond Calk Horseshoe Company was founded in 1908 and later became a major manufacturer and exporter of wrenches and automotive tools. Duluth's huge wholesale Marshall Wells Hardware Company expanded in 1901 by opening branches in Portland, Oregon, and Winnipeg, Manitoba; the company catalog totaled 2,390 pages by 1913. The Duluth Showcase Company, which later became the Duluth Refrigerator Company and then the Coolerator Company, was established in 1908. The Universal Atlas Cement Company, which made cement from the slag byproduct of the steel plant, began operations in 1917.

Immigration Because of its numerous jobs in mining and industry, the city was a destination for large waves of immigrants from Europe during the early 20th century. It became the centre of one of the largest Finnish communities in the world outside Finland. For decades, a Finnish-language daily newspaper, Päivälehti, was published in the city, named after the former Grand Duchy of Finland's pro-independence leftist paper. The Finnish community of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members published a widely read labor newspaper Industrialisti. From 1907 to 1941, the Finnish Socialist Federation and then the IWW operated Work People's College, an educational institution that taught classes from a working-class, socialist perspective. Immigrants from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Ireland, England, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Ukraine, Romania, and Russia also settled in Duluth. At one time, Duluth was home to several historic immigrant neighborhoods, including Little Italy. Today, people of Scandinavian descent constitute a strong plurality of Duluth's population, accounting for more than one third of the residents identifying European ancestry.

Duluth lynchings In September 1918 a group calling itself the Knights of Liberty dragged Finnish immigrant Olli Kinkkonen from his boarding house, tarred and feathered him, and lynched him. Kinkkonen did not want to fight in World War I and had planned to return to Finland. His body was found two weeks later hanging in a tree in Duluth's Lester Park.

Another lynching in Duluth occurred on June 15, 1920, when three innocent black male circus workers: Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, were attacked by a white mob and hanged after purportedly raping a teenage white girl. The Duluth lynchings took place on First Street and Second Avenue East. In the late 20th century, journalist Michael Fedo wrote The Lynchings in Duluth (1970), which began to raise awareness of the event. Community members from many different groups began to come together for reflection and education. The men's unmarked graves were located and in 1991, gravestones were erected with funding from a local church. Vigils were held at the intersection where the men were lynched. In 2000, a grassroots committee was formed, and began to offer speakers to groups and schools. It decided to commemorate the event with a memorial. The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, which includes a corner wall and plaza, was dedicated in 2003. It includes three 7-foot (2.1 m)-tall bronze statues of the three men. The CJMM Committee continues to work for racial justice through educational outreach, community forums, and scholarships for youth.

1918 Cloquet Fire In 1918, the Cloquet Fire (named for the nearby city of Cloquet) burned across Carlton and southern St. Louis counties, destroying dozens of communities in the Duluth area. The fire was the worst natural disaster in Minnesota history in terms of the number of lives lost in a single day. Many people died on the rural roads surrounding the Duluth area, and historical accounts tell of victims dying while trying to outrun the fire. The News Tribune reported, "It is estimated that 100 families were rendered homeless by Saturday's fire in the territory known as the Woodland District… In most cases, families which lost their homes also lost most or all of their furniture and personal belongings, the limited time and transportation facilities affording little opportunity for saving anything but human life". The National Guard unit based in Duluth was mobilized in a heroic effort to battle the fire and assist victims, but the troops were overwhelmed by the enormity of the fire.

Retired Duluth News Tribune columnist and journalist Jim Heffernan writes that his mother "recalled an overnight vigil watching out the window of their small home on lower Piedmont Avenue with her father, her younger sisters having gone to sleep, ready to be evacuated to the waterfront should the need arise. The fire never made it that far down the hill, but devastated what is now Piedmont Heights, and, of course, a widespread area of Northeastern Minnesota". In the fire's aftermath, tens of thousands of people were left injured or homeless; many of the refugees fled into the city for aid and shelter.

Continued growth

For the first half of the 20th century, Duluth was an industrial port boom town dominated by its several grain elevators, a cement plant, a nail mill, wire mills, and the Duluth Works plant. Handling and export of iron ore, brought in from the Mesabi Range, was integral to the city's economy, as well as to the steel industry in the Midwest, including in manufacturing cities in Ohio.

The Aerial Lift Bridge (earlier known as the "Aerial Bridge" or "Aerial Ferry Bridge") was built in 1905 and at that time was known as the United States' first transporter bridge—only one other was ever constructed in the country. In 1929–30, the span was converted to a vertical-lift bridge (also rather uncommon). The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

In 1916, after Europe had entered the Great War (World War I), a shipyard was constructed on the St. Louis River. A new workers neighborhood, today known as Riverside, developed around the large operation. Similar industrial expansions took place during the Second World War, as Duluth's large harbor and the area's vast natural resources were put to work for the war effort. Tankers and submarine chasers (usually called "sub-chasers") were built at the Riverside shipyard. The population of Duluth continued to grow in the postwar decade and a half, peaking at 107,884 in 1960.

Economic decline Economic decline began in the 1950s, when high-grade iron ore ran out on the Iron Range north of Duluth; ore shipments from the Duluth harbor had been critical to the city's economy. Low-grade ore (taconite) shipments continued, boosted by new taconite pellet technology, but ore shipments were lower overall.

In the 1970s the United States experienced a steel crisis, a recession in the global steel market, and like many American cities Duluth entered a period of industrial restructuring. In 1981, US Steel closed its Duluth Works plant, a blow to the city's economy whose effects included the closure of the cement company, which had depended on the steel plant for raw materials (slag). More closures followed in other industries, including shipbuilding and heavy machinery. By decade's end, unemployment rates hit 15 percent. The economic downturn was particularly hard on Duluth's West Side, where ethnic Eastern and Southern European workers had lived for decades.

During the 1980s, plans were underway to extend Interstate 35 through Duluth and up the North Shore, bringing new access to the city. The original plan called for the interstate to run along the shore on an elevated concrete structure, blocking the city's access to Lake Superior. Kent Worley, a local landscape architect, wrote an impassioned letter to then mayor Ben Boo asking that the route be reconsidered. The Minnesota Department of Transportation agreed to take another look, with Worley consulting. The new plan called for parts of the highway to run through tunnels, which allowed preservation of Fitger's Brewery, Sir Ben's Tavern, Leif Erikson Park, and Duluth's Rose Garden. Rock used from the interstate project was used to create an extensive new beach along Lake Superior, along which the city's Lakewalk was built.

21st-century development With the decline of the city's industrial core, the local economic focus gradually shifted to tourism. The downtown area was renovated to emphasize its pedestrian character: streets were paved with red brick and skywalks and retail shops were added. The city and developers worked with the area's unique architectural character, converting old warehouses along the waterfront into cafés, shops, restaurants, and hotels. Combined with the new rock beach and Lakewalk, these changes developed the new Canal Park as a tourism-oriented district. Duluth's population, which had declined since 1960, stabilized at around 85,000.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Duluth has become a regional centre for banking, retail shopping, and medical care for northern Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and north-western Michigan. It is estimated that more than 8,000 jobs in Duluth are directly related to its two hospitals. Arts and entertainment offerings, as well as year-round recreation and the natural environment, have contributed to expansion of the tourist industry. Some 3.5 million visitors each year contribute more than $400 million to the local economy.

More recently a collection of like-minded businesses in Lincoln Park, an old rundown blue-collar neighborhood with high unemployment and poverty rates, was cultivated by a group of entrepreneurs who have begun rebuilding and revitalizing the area. Since 2014 at least 25 commercial real estate transactions have occurred and 17 businesses have opened, including restaurants, breweries, coffee shops and artist studios. Due to the neighborhood's revitalization, many developers are also investing in housing projects in anticipation of further growth.

Waterfront reclamation efforts Duluth's prominence as a port city gave it an economic advantage in its early years, but as various industries began to wane, new efforts to reclaim areas of the waterfront for public use emerged. Notable among them is the reclamation of the St. Louis River corridor, which runs along the edge of the city's western neighborhoods. Many of these sites, filled with legacy pollutants due to previous industrial use, have been or are in the process of being restored by the EPA, with several developments, such as Pier B Resort and Hotel, demonstrating the revitalization opportunity of these former industrial spaces.

Other efforts to reclaim waterfront space in Duluth have been led by the Duluth Waterfront Collective. One notable example includes the Highway 61 Revisited concept, which seeks to reimagine the I-35 corridor as it runs through the city's downtown. The group's efforts have been met with interest, with the city council voting to explore options for the corridor in 2021.

While the acreage of land utilizing the waterway for port-related purposes has shifted in recent years, the goods being shipped through the Duluth-Superior port have shifted to reflect a changing economy. In recent decades, declines in the shipment of coal and iron ore have been met by increases in the shipment of wind turbine components and multimodal shipping containers.

Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 87.43 square miles (226.44 km²); 67.79 square miles (175.58 km²) is land and 19.64 square miles (50.87 km²) is water. It is Minnesota's second-largest city by land area, surpassed only by Hibbing. Duluth's canal connects Lake Superior to the Duluth–Superior harbor and the Saint Louis River. It is spanned by the Aerial Lift Bridge, which connects Canal Park with Minnesota Point (or "Park Point"). Minnesota Point is about 7 miles (11 km) long, and when included with adjacent Wisconsin Point, which extends 3 miles (4.8 km) from the city of Superior, Wisconsin, is the largest freshwater baymouth bar in the world at a total of 10 miles (16 km).

Duluth's topography is dominated by a steep hillside that climbs from Lake Superior to high inland elevations. Duluth has been called "the San Francisco of the Midwest", alluding to San Francisco's similar water-to-hilltop topography. This similarity was most evident before World War II, when Duluth had a network of streetcars and an inclined railroad, the 7th Avenue West Incline Railway, that, like San Francisco's cable cars, climbed a steep hill. The change in elevation is illustrated by Duluth's two airports. The weather station at the lakeside Sky Harbor Airport on Minnesota Point has an elevation of 607 feet (185 m), while Duluth International Airport, atop the hill, is 820 feet (250 m) higher at 1,427 feet (435 m).

View from International Space Station, 2017. Duluth and Lake Superior coast are visible at far left

Even as the city has grown, its populace has tended to hug Lake Superior's shoreline, so Duluth is primarily a southwest–northeast city. The considerable development on the hill has given Duluth many steep streets. Some neighborhoods, such as Piedmont Heights and Bayview Heights, are atop the hill with scenic views of the city. Skyline Parkway is a scenic roadway that extends from Becks Road above the Gary – New Duluth neighborhood near the western end of the city to the Lester Park neighborhood on the east side. It crosses nearly Duluth's entire length and affords views of Lake Superior, the Aerial Lift Bridge, Canal Park, and the many industries that inhabit the largest inland port.

A developing part of the city is the Miller Hill Mall area and the adjacent big-box retailer shopping strips "over the hill" along the Miller Trunk Highway corridor. The 2009–10 road reconstruction project in Duluth's Miller Hill area improved movement through the U.S. Highway 53 corridor from Trinity Road to Maple Grove Road. The highway project reconstructed connector roads, intersections, and adjacent roadways. A new international airport terminal was completed in 2013 as part of the federal government's Stimulus Reconstruction Program.

Geological history The geology of Duluth demonstrates the Midcontinent Rift, formed as the North American continent began to split apart about 1.1 billion years ago. As the earth's crust thinned, magma rose toward the surface. These intrusions formed a 16 km (9.9 mi)-thick sill, primarily of gabbro, which is known as the Duluth Complex.

The creation of the Lake Superior basin reflects the erosive power of continental glaciers that advanced and retreated over Minnesota several times in the past 2 million years. The mile-thick ice sheets easily eroded the sandstone that filled the axis of the rift valley but encountered more resistance from the igneous rocks forming the flanks of the rift, now the margins of the lake basin. As the last glacier retreated, meltwaters filled the lake to as high as 500 feet (150 m) above the current level; the Skyline Parkway roughly follows one of the highest levels of the ancient Lake Superior, Glacial Lake Duluth. The sandstone that buried the igneous rocks of the rift is exposed near Fond du Lac. At one time a large number of quarries produced the stone, sold as Fond du Lac or Lake Superior brownstone. It was widely used in Duluth buildings and also shipped to Minneapolis, Chicago, and Milwaukee, where it was also used extensively. The weathered sandstone forms the sandy lake bottom and shores of Park Point.