Duluth, Minnesota - San Francisco of the North

Looking toward Lake Superior

In the early 1980s my mother, brothers Tony, Bobby and oldest daughter visited Duluth, Minnesota.  We toured a narrow swatch of ho hum shops and a seafood restaurant too close to the raised interstate highway.  It didn't impress.  This September we visited friends in Duluth and found ample evidence the city's now more zippy and good guides make all the difference.

Watching 1000-foot long laker entering canal to Port of Duluth

The history of Duluth is as undulating as it's topography.  At the turn of the 19th century Duluth, Minnesota had more millionaires per capita than any other city in the world.  Astonishing considering just 14 families lived there in 1869.  All that changed with the 1870 discovery of taconite in the aptly named Minnesota Iron Range.  Taconite is a low grade iron ore, vital to industrialization.

Laker going under Aerial Lift Bridge, famous Duluth landmark

By 1900 Duluth's fledgling port surpassed both New York and Chicago in gross tonnage.  Immigrants from most of the world's mining countries were flocking to Duluth which became the largest Finnish community outside Finland.
  

Touring the Mariner's Museum

Duluth was vital to American industrial defense in both World Wars. In the 1940s professors at the University of Minnesota's School of Mines invented of an economical pelleting process for taconite, coinciding with the end of  high-grade iron ore extraction in the U.S.  This extended the Duluth iron boom until the late 1970s when foreign competition started to steam-roll in from Japan and now China and Brazil.   One of the worst blows to the city of Duluth was the 1981 closure of the U.S. Steel Duluth Works. Tourism, medical care, maritime research and shopping have all improved.  No doubt the lake's improved too-taconite mining was hard on the largest freshwater lake in the world.
Today grain is the main commodity shipped.

Ship controls

Like most other port cities Duluth is gritty and grand.  It was great fun to dash about Canal Park, the entry point of the huge ships navigating the Great Lakes.  I mean that literally because it was pouring rain, with bone-chilling gale force winds, bringing home to me what it means to be a mariner on Lake Superior. Many of the old factories and warehouses have been converted to trendy offices, boutiques, art galleries and the finest coffee house this side of Italy.

Taconite pellets

   -Painting of the Edmund Fitzgerald, lost with all hands November 10, 1975 No bodies were ever found 

    -Museum exhibit of finding the ship with sonar at the bottom of the Lake, 535 deep

The best of all possible worlds: Sublime coffee with good friends at Amazing Grace Bakery near the Duluth waterfront