DNT Extra April 2020

How Duluth became ‘Duluth’

One year ago, the Duluth News Tribune proudly celebrated its 150th anniversary and looked back at its coverage of the Northland over those years in the April 2019 issue of DNT Extra.

Rick Lubbers

Now it’s Duluth’s turn to celebrate 150 years as a city.

For the April 2020 DNT Extra, we teamed up with Tony Dierckins, the Northland’s preeminent historian, to revisit Duluth’s fledgling years.

We published eight of his articles from January through April and have compiled them in this edition. His new book, “Duluth: An Urban Biography” (Minnesota Historical Society Press, April 2020), goes further into the rich, fascinating history of Duluth. For more information on Tony’s book, visit zenithcity.com.

We hope you’ll enjoy this special look back at the city of Duluth’s founding, its struggles and its triumphs. Tony even helps set the record straight on a few local myths.

Thanks for being a loyal reader of the Duluth News Tribune.

Happy birthday, Duluth!

Rick Lubbers is the executive editor of the Duluth News Tribune. Contact him at 218-723-5301 or rlubbers@duluthnews.com.

4-7 8-11 12-14 15-17 18-21

The many birthdays of the Zenith City Duluth’s first boom —–and bust: 1856–1868

How Jay Cooke resurrected Duluth’s ‘lifeless corpse’

Joshua B. Culver: Duluth’s first mayor and leader of ‘The Ring’

22-27

1870: Duluth’s first year as a city

28-31

32-35 36-38

Digging The canal: Duluth’s defining creation myth Duluth: legendary city of the unsalted seas

Benedictine Sisters and Duluth Clinic physicians lay foundation for health care

Page design for this section by Renae Ronquist. Editing by Rick Lubbers and Beverly Godfrey.

Cover: Courtesy of Duluth Public Library (top photo) and Getty Images (bottom photo) Cover designed by Gary Meader / gmeader@duluthnews.com

How Duluth became ‘Duluth’

By Tony Dierckins Special to the News Tribune

By the time the Zenith City first became a city in March 1870, people had been calling the community centered on the base of Minnesota Point “Duluth” for 14 years. How did Duluth become “Duluth”? With a picnic, of course.

The name Duluth first appeared in print in 1856. That year surveyor Richard Reif finished platting a townsite at Lake Superior’s westernmost tip on behalf of proprietors Joshua Culver, Orrin Rice, Robert Jefferson, and brothers George and William Nettleton. It sat between Third Avenue East and Eighth Avenue West, from First Street south to roughly Buchanan Street in today’s Canal Park business district.

Recollections of early Duluthians tell that the town received its name at a picnic on Minnesota Point organized by the Nettleton brothers on a lovely summer day in 1856 where “various names for the new town were proposed and Mr. Wilson at last proposed ‘Duluth.’”

Mr. Wilson was the Rev. Joseph Gaston Wilson, a native of Ohio who had arrived in Superior the previous year to teach at the Presbyterian Sunday School. Wilson is credited for giving the second Christian sermon in what is now Duluth in October 1855 in a log boarding house in Oneota townsite (now a West Duluth

Duluth’s Development Timeline

Second Treaty of La Pointe allows settlement on the “Minnesota side” of Lake Superior.

Original Townsite of Duluth platted, along with 10 other townsites, on May 26.

Duluth co-founder George Nettleton, who in 1856 offered the Rev. Joseph G. Wilson two lots on Minnesota Point to come up with a fitting name for the nascent community. (Courtesy of Duluth Public Library)

neighborhood).

Wilson was well prepared. The Nettletons had offered him two lots in their new town if he could find an appropriate name for it. On George Nettleton’s bookshelf Wilson discovered an English translation of a book by Jesuits describing the efforts of French missionaries and explorers in North America. There he read about the exploits of Daniel Greysolon Sieur du Lhut, who once proclaimed that

1857

Five townsites, including Duluth, join to incorporate as the Town of Duluth on May 19; population 1,560 in all of St. Louis County.

he “feared not death, only cowardice and dishonor.” Du Lhut was an ambitious and often arrogant 17th-century French soldier described by friends (and himself) as an adventurous diplomat — and by rivals as a scrupleless outlaw. Unlike the French voyageurs and missionaries, du Lhut came to western Lake Superior seeking neither fur nor

Continued on page 6

1860

Population: 80 (St. Louis County: 406).

Daniel Greysolon Sieur du Lhut is depicted in his hometown of Saint-Germain-Laval, France, in this painting by Duluth artist David Ericson. The painting was also installed in the Glass Block’s Greysolon Tea Rooms in 1919 and hung over the fireplace. (Courtesy of Duluth Public Library)

converts. He wanted to make a name for himself, either by discovering a water passage to the Pacific Ocean or by bringing the Ojibwe and Dakota together to ensure the Dakota would partner with the French in the fur trade — or both.

While du Lhut never ventured farther west than Mille Lacs Lake, he is traditionally credited for arranging the 1679 Dakota-Ojibwe gathering at Fond du Lac that began a 57-year alliance between the tribes.

He was also accused by another French explorer, René-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle, of being “king of the outlaws” for entering the Lake Superior region without a license to trade. Several

1865

Population: 126 (St. Louis County: 294).

historians suggest La Salle’s accusation was caused by petty jealousy, and that du Lhut’s contemporaries considered him “a very honest man.”

Perhaps Wilson settled on du Lhut as a namesake because the Frenchman had actually been to “Duluth.” In 1679 he and a small party of French and Ojibwe reached Minnesota Point, carrying their canoes across the sandbar along a path near its base that the Ojibwe called Onigamiinsing (Little Portage).

Wilson’s audience likely sat on blankets not far from where du Lhut had portaged. Reif platted the path as Portage Street, and beginning in 1870 it was carved out of the sandbar and widened to become the Duluth Ship Canal.

1870

Duluth — including newly annexed towns of Rice’s Point, Portland and Endion — becomes a city on March 6; population: 3,129.

Wilson’s tale of du Lhut’s adventures and his anglicized suggestion of “Duluth” were enthusiastically received by the community’s early claim holders. Witnesses remembered anointing the choice with the popping of champagne corks and a toast, as the sun set, to Duluth, destined to become “Queen of the West.”

Wilson got his land, but he never made a home in the town he had named. He left, as did most others, after the Financial Panic of 1857. By 1860 he was living in Terre Haute, Indiana, and 10 years later he was editing and publishing a Presbyterian newspaper in Fort Madison, Iowa, where he died in 1886.

1873

Clarence C.

depiction of Daniel Greysolon Sieur du Lhut landing at Onigamiinsing (Little Portage) on Minnesota Point in 1679. The painting originally hung in the lobby of the Greysolon Tea Rooms of Duluth’s Glass Block Store beginning in 1919. (Courtesy of Duluth Public Library)

Financial Panic strikes September 18; population: 5,000.

So if Duluth is named for Daniel du Lhut, who is Jean Duluth Road named for? Duluth researcher Heidi Bakk-Hansen found that the 1876 edition of Johnson’s Universal Cyclopaedia claimed that the city was named for “Capt. John Duluth … who visited the country and built a hut in 1760.”

It was a piece of pure fiction written by Duluth Herald editor Robert D’Unger. Within a year local journalists had Francisized “John” to Jean and by 1903, when it was used for the new Jean Duluth Farm, it had become widespread. The road was named for the farm, not for Duluth’s namesake. u

1875

Population: 2,415.

Rosenkranz’s

The many birthdays of the Zenith City

By Tony Dierckins Special to the News Tribune

In 1956, every man in Duluth was encouraged to grow a beard — whether or not he worked in one of the local breweries — as part of the city’s centennial celebration.

But here in 2020 we’re celebrating Duluth’s

sesquicentennial as a city. So that would make 1970 the centennial, right? Right.

We would have also accepted 1957, 1977 — twice — and 1987. They all work, depending on how you interpret Duluth’s complex history.

Continued on page 10

This painting of Duluth by Gilbert Munger was made in 1871 when the city was officially 1 year old. By then the population was climbing toward 5,000, while less than two years earlier fewer than 200 people lived in Duluth. (Courtesy of Duluth Public Library)

In 1949 Arthur Baum described that history as “a long series of counterpunches at circumstances and events. When Duluth wins a round,” he wrote, “it habitually comes up off the canvas to do it.” Baum was referring to the booms and busts Duluth enjoyed and endured during its first 40 years.

When Northeastern Minnesota opened to U.S. citizens and European immigrants in 1856, Duluth was one of 11 townsites platted between today’s Fond du Lac and Lakeside. In one year, their combined population boomed from zero to 1,560.

The original Duluth townsite sat between Third Avenue East and Eighth Avenue West, from First Street south to just above Buchanan Street. Its plat was completed May 26, 1856 — Duluth’s first birthday and the one celebrated in 1956.

Before the town was incorporated, it was expanded to include several other townsites. It lay between Third Avenue East and Eight Avenue West from Fifth Street to Minnesota Point’s Oatka Beach at 38th Street South — essentially today’s Central Hillside, Downtown, Canal Park Business District and Park Point.

That Duluth was incorporated on May 19, 1857 — its second birthday. But that September brought the Financial Panic of 1857, and with it Duluth’s first bust. Three-quarters of the population fled by January. No wonder Duluth chose 1856 to mark its centennial — 1857 was hardly worth celebrating.

Duluth’s 1887 corporate seal, designed when Great Lakes shipping, the grain trade and the lumber industry —– all represented on the shield —– had helped Duluth boom back from the brink of bankruptcy. (Courtesy of the city of Duluth)

Duluth in the 1860s was a deserted, desolate place — the 1865 census counted just 126 residents.

Then Jay Cooke announced he would terminate his railroads in Duluth in early 1869, and the population exploded.

Duluth became a city March 6, 1870 — the community’s third birthday, and first as a city. That year census takers estimated the population at 3,129.

Duluth stretched between 21st Avenue East and 30th Avenue West from Fifth Street to Oatka Beach, including Rice’s Point. By 1873, 5,000 people lived within those borders. But that September Cooke ran out of money, setting off the Panic of 1873 — and Duluth’s second bust.

Again people fled. The population soon dropped to “1,300 souls” by one resident’s recollections. It likely wasn’t that low — the 1875 census shows 2,415 living in the city.

But Duluth was also deeply in debt. In 1877, its leaders decided that to rebuild the city’s financial house, they first had to burn most of it down. They allowed Duluth’s city charter to expire, then reorganized the community as a village.

The plan refinanced Duluth’s debt at 25 cents on the dollar. As an incentive to pay bondholders, its borders were retracted to between Third Avenue East and Fourth Avenue West from Fifth Street to Oatka Beach: as the village paid its debts, it would regain its 1870 borders.

Duluth reorganized as a village on October 22, borders reduced.

1880

Population: 3,483. 1877

Duluth ceased being a city, and became the District of Duluth, on March 4, 1877 — its fourth birthday. Its fifth, the day it officially became a village, is Oct. 22, 1877.

Why the delay? Reorganizing first as a district allowed city leaders to resign before Duluth became a village — and thereby avoid being sued by bondholders who had just lost 75% of their investments.

Fortunately, the grain industry had arrived in Duluth, followed not long after by the lumber trade. Soon Duluth was in the midst of its third boom. By 1880 the population reached 3,483.

Not everyone was happy. In 1881, Duluthians living south of the canal — frustrated that no permanent bridge had been built to span the waterway — ceded and became the Village of Park Point.

Despite the loss, Duluth’s population doubled to 7,800. By 1887, it topped 26,000. That year Duluth finished repaying its debt, and Duluth regained its city status March 2, 1887 — Duluth’s sixth birthday, or second as a city.

Baum also compared

1881

In light of Duluth’s many birthdays, perhaps this updated seal more accurately reflects the city’s complex history. (Courtesy of Zenith City Press)

Duluth to “a dachshund … a city-and-a-half long and a tenth of a city wide.” It gained that shape through annexations made between 1889 and 1896, including the neighborhoods we know today from Fond du Lac to Lester Park and above Skyline Parkway. And also Park Point, enticed by the promise of a bridge over the ship canal. Happy 150th birthday, city of Duluth! u

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1885

Population: 18,036.

Property owners on Minnesota Point south of the ship canal cede from Duluth and reorganize as the Village of Park Point.

Transforming the nation’s energy landscape—from the corner of Lake Avenue and Superior Street.

Duluth’s first boom — and bust: 1856-1868

By Tony Dierckins Special to the News Tribune

As 1856 began, perhaps no other region in the U.S. stood as poised with promise as did the western end of Lake Superior. More than a dozen townsites had been platted along the lake’s north shore between today’s Duluth and Grand Marais, an area which surveyors speculated held more copper than Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. Their incorporators hoped each town would become home to a lucrative mine. Eleven more were staked out in what is now Duluth, and their proprietors each wished their property would become the center of a great city fueled by the copper-mining industry.

John D. Ray, who arrived at the Head of the Lakes in 1855 and, along with Sidney and Harriet Luce, John Carey and a few others, “stood over the lifeless corpse of Duluth” from 1858 to 1868.

(Courtesy of the Duluth Public Library)

1887

Duluth regains its city status on March 2, 1887 — borders restored and expanded.

1890

Annexation of Park Point; population: 33,115.

prospectors found no copper, at least not enough worth mining. By the time the speculators stopped speculating, 1,560 people were living within Duluth’s modern borders.

Then came the Financial Panic of 1857, and people fled — three-quarters of them deserted by January, many walking to St. Paul. For the next decade those who remained struggled to keep their towns alive.

The North Shore was all but abandoned. A few stores remained open in Superior; none in the Minnesota townsites. No flour that first winter meant no bread. Those who remained fished and trapped and grew a few potatoes. One early resident later referred to these hardy souls as the “Ancient and Honorable Order of the Fish Eaters.”

Local trade was handled on a barter system. When Orrin Rice offered to give two corner lots in Duluth to John Carey, St. Louis County’s first judge,

in exchange for a pair of boots, Carey refused — the footwear would be worth much more in the winter to come.

Sidney and Harriet Luce, farmers from Ashtabula County, Ohio, had arrived less than a year earlier. The Luces had invested in Portland, platted between Third and 15th avenues east, and wished to see their property. The Luces did not intend to stay, but after so many left in the wake of the panic, they and a few others remained to protect their investment and those of their friends.

Before the panic, Sidney Luce had built a wharf and a warehouse at the foot of Third Avenue East. Copper mining would certainly attract a railroad, Luce surmised, and a building boom along with it — and his facilities would be ready to receive the necessary supplies.

The copper bust and the panic forced Luce’s building into a completely different role, later

Judge John Carey, circa 1896. In 1856, the community’s future looked so bleak he wouldn’t trade a pair of boots for two corner lots in Duluth. (Courtesy of the Duluth Public Library)

Annexation of “streetcar suburbs” to the north: Woodland, Hunter’s Park, Kenwood, Duluth Heights, Piedmont Heights.

Annexation of Lakeside and Lester Park.

described by the Duluth Minnesotian as the “artery through which the pulsations of the coming city beat.”

Luce’s warehouse, technically Duluth’s first commercial building, became home to the Federal Land Office, the post office, the county’s first courthouse, the register of deeds office, and county auditor’s and treasurer’s offices. It also hosted annual townsite and school district meetings.

Luce (whose motto was “Do it for Duluth!”) and others worked to retain the population, in part by creating jobs. In 1859 he staked German cooper Gottlieb Busch and three Yankee carpenters with land, lumber and a brew kettle, and they built a brewery. Thanks to Luce and Busch, who served as brewmaster, even if those hanging on in nascent Duluth had only fish and potatoes to eat, at least they could wash them down with beer.

It would take a lot more than hops to help Duluth survive. The population of the 1856 townsites dropped to 406 by 1860. That included just 80 in what the federal Census Bureau counted as Duluth: every settlement between 21st Avenue East

and Rice’s Point.

The Civil War further decimated the population, as Judge Carey later explained: “Many of those that yet remained departed, some with the patriotic spirit to enlist in the Union army.” For the next eight years Ojibwe residents far outnumbered the immigrants, especially during the summer when they set up camps along Minnesota Point.

Of that period historian Walter Van Brunt would later write that a handful of people, including Carey and Luce, “kept vigil over the lifeless corpse of Duluth.” After the war ended a few returned, and a false gold rush on Lake Vermilion gave the local population a temporary boost.

Even so, the population of Duluth townsite in early 1869 was described as “14 families … all gathered together in a little hamlet at the base of Minnesota Point.”

With essentially no economy — nor a railroad to attract industry — it looked as though none of the 1856 townsites would ever become a great city. That all changed in February 1869 when Jay Cooke announced that he would terminate his Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad in Duluth. u

The mayoral portrait of Sidney Luce, Duluth’s third mayor (1872–1873), who came to the community in 1857 and helped see it through its darkest days. (Courtesy of the Duluth Public Library)

How Jay Cooke resurrected Duluth’s ‘lifeless corpse’

By Tony Dierckins

Special to the News Tribune

In 1869 journalist John Trowbridge wrote that “civilization is attracted to the line of a railroad like steel-filings to a magnet.”

Duluth in the 1860s had been described as a “lifeless corpse,” and that February fewer than 200 people lived in town. To survive, the community needed to get one heck of a strong magnet.

Specifically, Duluth wanted the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad (LS&M), which would connect the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River at St. Paul. It would also link with the Northern Pacific Railroad (NP), essentially connecting Lake Superior with the Pacific Ocean at Puget Sound.

But the LS&M’s investors ran out of money after building just a few miles of track starting

in St. Paul. They turned to Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke. Cooke’s banking house had financed much of the Union Army’s effort during the Civil War, selling bonds to wealthy Europeans.

Cooke, who was also being courted by the NP’s investors, came to the LS&M’s rescue, providing funding that secured its future. But the railroad’s northern terminus hadn’t been determined, and both Duluth and Superior wanted the railroad, as it would surely make its host city a great shipping center, eclipsing Chicago.

Cooke visited the region in June 1868, according

Continued on page 16

Jay Cooke’s railroads and investments resurrected the ‘lifeless corpse’ of Duluth. (Lithograph is public domain)

to the St. Paul Daily Press, “on business connected with the eastern terminus” of the LS&M and to see for himself timber property he had purchased along the lower St. Louis, Nemadji and Cloquet rivers. During his trip Cooke met with local leaders.

Since Cooke controlled the LS&M, Duluth’s founders needed to persuade him to terminate the railroad in Duluth. They had apparently failed to convince Cooke during his visit, so in January 1869 they asked George Stuntz to give it a try.

Stuntz, a surveyor, road builder and trader, first arrived in 1852 and established a post and dock near the southern end of Minnesota Point. Stuntz’s old boss, former Surveyor General of the United States George Sargent, had spent the war selling bonds for Cooke. He also once predicted that “the undeveloped wealth of the Lake Superior region offers reward beyond calculation to those who have

Annexation of Village of West Duluth, including today’s Oneota, Denfeld, Cody, Irving and Fairmount

the energy and enterprise to secure it.”

With an introduction from Sargent, Stuntz would try to convince Cooke to bring the LS&M to Duluth. So he traveled east. Sargent not only made the introduction but also purchased 20 lots in Duluth, sight unseen.

In Philadelphia, Stuntz assured Cooke the land along his railroads could be sold as farmland at a healthy profit. He also mentioned Northeastern Minnesota’s potential mineral and timber resources and Sargent’s investment.

Shortly after Stuntz’s visit, Cooke not only selected Duluth over Superior, but also decided to invest in the NP, which would lease LS&M track east from Carlton, making Duluth the transcontinental railroad’s eastern terminus.

Cooke’s choice is arguably the most significant moment in Duluth’s history. One historian later

Annexation of “western suburbs,” including Bayview Heights, Ironton, Smithville, Spirit Lake, New Duluth, and Fond du Lac; population: 59,396

George Sargent sent George Stuntz to the Head of the Lakes in 1852 and introduced him to Jay Cooke in January 1869, which led to Duluth’s revival. (Lithograph courtesy of the Duluth Public Library)

George Stuntz was a surveyor, road builder, ore finder ... and Cooke convincer. (Photo courtesy of the Duluth Public Library)

described the transformation that followed as nothing short of miraculous: “A glorious resurrection took place; the lifeless corpse (of Duluth), touched by the wand of Jay Cooke, sprang full-armed from the tomb.”

What Jay Cooke waved was less a wand than it was a wad of cash. By May 1869 his agents, including Sargent, had arrived in Duluth and began spending his money as well as their own, investing in early enterprises.

They opened the town’s first bank, which everyone called Jay Cooke’s Bank. They financed the construction of Duluth’s first church building, St. Paul’s Episcopal, which locals called Jay Cooke’s Church. Eastern newspapers called Duluth Jay Cooke’s Town.

Trowbridge also wrote that Duluth, with its railroad, “appears to be the point of a magnet of more than ordinary power.”

Indeed, with the news of Cooke’s decision, the population boomed. Other investors arrived and built sawmills and merchandise docks, dry goods and grocery stores, boarding houses and brothels. The spring of 1869 brought an army of immigrants, mostly Scandinavians, recruited to help build the railroads.

Construction of the LS&M west from Duluth began in May. The railroad built docks, a warehouse, a freight depot and a grain elevator along the lakeshore — Duluth’s first steps toward becoming a great shipping center.

By midsummer the population had grown tenfold. A bill passed by the Minnesota Legislature on March 6, 1870, made the town of Duluth a city. The next month’s census recorded 3,129 residents, and that August the LS&M began daily service.

Duluth would continue to boom until its savior, Jay Cooke, ran out of money. u

Duluth: AN URBAN BIOGRAPHY

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1900 1900- 1910

Population: 52,969

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Dierckins's engaging historytellsthe unvarnished storiesofa city forgedby gritandresiliencein the face ofhardship.

Joshua B. Culver: Duluth’s first mayor and leader of ‘The Ring’

By Tony Dierckins Special to the News Tribune

When Duluth first became a city on March 6, 1870, it stretched roughly between today’s 21st Avenue East and 30th Avenue West, from about Fifth Street to the shores of Lake Superior and the St. Louis River, including all of Rice’s Point and most of Minnesota Point.

About 3,100 people lived within its borders, and on April 4, 1870, they elected Joshua Backus Culver, a Democrat, their first mayor.

Or at least 241 of them did, or 54% of voters. Due to restrictions regarding citizenship, age and gender, only 448 men voted in that first election.

Culver, a native of Tomkins, New York, was 25 years old when he moved to Superior, Wisconsin, with his wife, Sarah, in 1855. The next year he co-founded the towns of Fond du Lac and Duluth and built a sawmill, and later a

The mayoral portrait of Joshua B. Culver, the city of Duluth’s first mayor (1870–1871), who also served as mayor of the Village of Duluth in 1882. (Image courtesy of the Duluth Public Library)

merchandise dock, on the bayside of South Lake Avenue near Morse Street.

He also opened Duluth’s first general store and served as its first postmaster. When the Civil War began, Culver enlisted in the 13th Michigan Infantry, which saw action in at least 10 major battles. He mustered out a colonel in July 1865 and returned to Duluth.

In the 1870 election, Culver defeated Scottish immigrant John Hunter, a mercantile and hardware store owner who later turned to banking and real estate. Duluth’s Hunter’s Park neighborhood is named for his family.

Hunter, a Republican, had been convinced to move to Duluth in 1869 by Dr. Thomas Foster, editor of the Duluth Minnesotian. Foster himself had been lured by Culver and others who offered him property and a building if he moved his St. Paul newspaper to Duluth.

In 1868 Foster gave a grand oration during an Independence Day celebration on Minnesota Point, boasting of the future Duluth. His speech declared that “all roads would lead to Duluth … our Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas,” giving the community its most enduring nickname.

But by the time Duluth became a city, Foster had lost his admiration for his benefactors — and theirs for him. Foster had come to consider many of them members of what he called “the Ring,” a group that included town founders, a few well-heeled and newly arrived capitalists and entrepreneurs, Jay Cooke’s agents, and investors in Cooke’s Lake

Superior & Mississippi Railroad.

Foster’s dislike for the Ring came from two simple issues: He felt they unfairly “ran” the community and several, like Culver, were Democrats. Foster had helped organize Minnesota’s Republican Party and was instrumental to its Duluth founding. He felt the Ring would assume total control of Duluth “if the people were fool enough to let them succeed.”

Foster failed to recognize that political affiliation mattered little to Duluth’s early power brokers, as Ring members ran for office on both tickets. In fact, in his inaugural speech Culver made sure to

Continued on page 21

John C. Hunter, Culver’s Republican opponent in Duluth’s 1870 mayoral election. Duluth’s Hunter’s Park neighborhood is named for his family. (Photograph courtesy of Zenith City Press)

This undated and unattributed sketch is one of only two known images of Dr. Thomas Foster, editor of the Duluth Minnesotian, Duluth’s first newspaper. (Image courtesy of Zenith City Press)

This grainy image is the only known photograph of Dr. Thomas Foster, editor of the Duluth Minnesotian, made February 15, 1870, during the groundbreaking for the Northern Pacific Railroad.

1910

Population: 78,466

1913

Duluth adapts Commissioner form of government

(Photograph courtesy of UMD Martin Library)

Superior Tribune and Duluth Tribune editor Robert C. Mitchell, photographed in 1894.

(Photograph courtesy of UMD Martin Library)

mention that his nomination “was organized by the leading men of both political parties.”

Besides Culver, most aldermen elected to the Common Council that April were considered Ring members, as were the city’s comptroller, treasurer and clerk. Foster’s election reporting accused Ring supporters of bribing voters with cash and whiskey.

The Ring would indeed run Duluth during its first few years. The city’s first three mayors — Culver, Clinton Markell and Sidney Luce — were Ring-labeled associates, and several established Duluth’s first churches and sat on its first school board.

They also organized the city’s first chamber of commerce and either lured industrial enterprises to town or organized and built them themselves: sawmills, coal docks, grain elevators, a blast furnace. For the next 20 years they essentially competed to see who could contribute most to the city’s development, and to their own fortunes along the way.

Foster wouldn’t see their success. Culver and his associates felt the editor had become “entirely too obstreperous.” Upon Jay Cooke’s advice they convinced Robert Mitchell to move his Superior Tribune to Duluth to compete with Foster.

Before the Duluth Tribune printed a single issue the Common Council voted to make it the city’s official newspaper for publishing public notices and named Mitchell “City Printer.” Foster abandoned his Zenith City in June 1872, leaving the Minnesotian to his sons, who

later sold it to Mitchell.

Culver would again serve as mayor in 1882, but died in office while visiting family in Buffalo, New York. In his memoirs, Luce wrote that Culver was “generous to a fault” and that “nothing (he) could do to advance (Duluth’s) interests was left undone.” u

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Population: 98,917 1920 1915- 1920

“Company Towns” develop: Spirit Lake Park becomes Morgan Park, portion of New Duluth becomes Gary, Ironton becomes Riverside, portion of Hunter’s Park becomes Morley Heights; also, Norton Park developed.

Caring for each other.

1870: Duluth’s first year as a city

By Tony Dierckins Special to the News Tribune

In 1870, its first year as a city, Duluth — destined to become the “Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas” — buzzed with activity. Immigrants poured in, swelling the population as construction transformed the landscape from wilderness to urban center. Consequently, that first year came with many firsts.

On April 4, Duluthians elected Joshua Culver their first mayor. The city’s Common Council first met on April 12, addressing two ordinances: “one for the licensing of saloons and the other for the suppression of dogs, of which there were said to be about 1,000 of all colors and breeds in and around Duluth.”

Branch’s Hall, Duluth first brick building, stands in front of Elevator A, ca. 1875; both were constructed in 1870. The Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad’s freight depot and warehouse can be seen to the right of the grain elevator. (Photo courtesy of the UMD Martin Library)

1930

Population: 101,463

1930s

United States Steel gives Morgan Park and Gary to Duluth, city acquires beachfront and southern end of Minnesota Point and tax-forfeited properties above Skyline Parkway throughout city.

On April 21, Culver appointed Robert Bruce the city’s first police chief. Bruce, described as “a stranger … whose presence was an anomaly,” abruptly left town that July owing local merchants and contractors $3,000 and was never heard of again.

November 25 saw the organization of Duluth’s first

1940

Employees of the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad pose with a locomotive outside the LS&M’s Freight Depot at the foot of Third Avenue East, ca. 1870. (Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Continued on page 24

Population: 101,065

1950

Population: 104,511

volunteer fire department. Eleven months later its first fire house, and first fire engine, were destroyed by fire.

Two newspapers began publishing in 1870. May 3 brought the first edition of the Duluth Tribune, and the Duluth Morning Call issued its first on November 28 (it lasted until June, 1871).

On August 5, community leaders founded Duluth’s first Chamber of Commerce. They included William Branch of the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad (LS&M), who that summer built Branch’s Hall, the city’s first brick building, at 416 E. Fourth St. — it was demolished in 1986.

The hall was one of many construction firsts in 1870, including several churches. Catholics founded and built their first church, Sacred Heart, at 201 W. Fourth St. — it burned in 1892.

The first First Methodist Church went up 301 W. Second St. In 1893 the building was dismantled, moved and reassembled as Virginia, Minnesota’s first First Methodist Church.

Founders of Duluth’s First Presbyterian Church built their first church at 231 E. Second St. After a new church was built in 1891, the 1870 edifice served as a Catholic and later a Lutheran church until its 1971 demolition.

And although it did not build a church in 1870, Duluth’s First Baptist Church was organized on August 2.

While Duluth’s first Jewish congregation, Temple Emanuel, did not build a temple until 1904, two of its 1891 founders, Bernard and Nettie Silberstein, arrived in 1870. Bernard, a successful merchant and civic leader, served as vice president of the city’s parks board for 20 years, often purchasing property and donating it to Duluth for park use.

Bernard and Nettie Silberstein, photographed in 1870, the year they arrived in the Zenith City. Bernard became a civic and business leader, and the Silbersteins were among the founders of Temple Emmanuel, Duluth’s first synagogue. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Lamkin and John Niemi)

Camille Poirer also arrived in 1870, earning his living hauling fresh water to homes and businesses. Twelve years later he received a patent for his “Pack-Strap,” which led to the creation of the Duluth Pack — still made in Duluth today. There were many more firsts that year, but most of the community’s activity centered on the coming of Jay Cooke’s railroads. On February 15 local representatives of Duluth, Superior and Fond du Lac gathered near today’s Carlton for the groundbreaking of Cooke’s Northern Pacific Railroad.

On August 1, workers drove the last spike in Cooke’s LS&M. Regular daily passenger and freight service of the LS&M between Duluth and St. Paul began on August 22. Duluth’s original Union Depot was built that year and served until it was replaced by a new Union Depot in 1892.

The first load of grain shipped from Duluth left on August 27. The grain was loaded from LS&M docks at the foot of Third Avenue East, as Duluth’s first grain storage facility, Elevator A, was under construction immediately east of the docks in 1870.

Fire destroyed Elevator A, and essentially put an end to Duluth’s outer harbor, in 1886. But thanks to the Duluth Ship Canal, the outer harbor was no longer needed. The canal’s construction, financed by the LS&M, also began in 1870.

When complete, the canal allowed ships safe harbor behind Minnesota Point, whereas the

outer harbor facilities exposed them to Lake Superior’s often turbulent waters. The dredging tug Ishpeming first began digging on September 5, 1870, stopped in November, and finished the following April.

The importance of Cooke’s railroads and the ship canal to Duluth’s ultimate success cannot be overestimated. Together they provided Duluth with the infrastructure it needed to become a major shipping center, which allowed it to survive after Cooke’s 1873 financial failure led to an economic depression that nearly destroyed the community. Without the railroads and ship canal, Superior — not Duluth — would have become the Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas. u

Duluth’s 1870 Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church. It was destroyed by fire in 1892 and replaced by Sacred Heart Cathedral, now a music center.

Camille Poirer, inventor of the Duluth pack, photographed in 1870 next to his sleigh, used to transport hogsheads of fresh water to local homes and businesses. (Photo courtesy of the Duluth Public Library)

(Photo courtesy of the Duluth Public Library)

The original First Methodist-Episcopal Church of Duluth, photographed in 1870. It was moved to Virginia, Minnesota, in 1892. (Photo courtesy of the UMD Martin Library)

Duluth’s original First Presbyterian Church of Duluth, photographed in 1870. The building, demolished in 1971, also served as a Catholic and Lutheran church. (Photo courtesy of the UMD Martin Library)

Digging the canal: Duluth’s defining creation myth

By Tony Dierckins Special to the News Tribune

The initial digging of Duluth’s ship canal was fairly simple. The steam-powered dredging tug Ishpeming began chewing through Minnesota Point in September 1870, stopped when the ground froze in November, and started again in late April 1871, finishing the initial cut on April 29.

Over the years those events have evolved into an extraordinarily tall tale that many still believe. Several versions of the legend exist, and most go something like this:

In winter 1871, Superiorites uncovered Duluth’s plot to dig a canal (in the legends, the digging had not yet begun), which they feared would reduce shipping traffic to Superior. Superior’s leaders filed for an injunction to stop the dredging, which the

1960

Population: 106,884

courts granted in April.

A telegram received on Friday, April 28, warned Duluthians that a governmentdispatched courier was en route to deliver the injunction. So the call went out for every ablebodied man, woman and child “who could handle a spade or shovel, or beg, borrow or steal a bucket or a bushel basket” to converge on the canal site where they “dug, scratched and burrowed ’till it was finished,” according to British author James Howard Bridge’s 1888 book “Uncle Sam at Home.”

By the break of dawn Monday, they had completed their task. The courier arrived at the moment the tug Frank C. Fero passed through the canal. Recognizing the hand-dug ditch as a navigable waterway,

1970

the courier decided that the injunction had been rendered invalid and tore up the document

Continued on page 30

Population: 100,578

1980

Population: 92,811

1990

Population: 85,493

The dredging tug Ishpeming carves the Duluth Ship Canal in autumn 1870. (Photo courtesy of the Lake Superior Maritime Collection)

on the spot, ending the whole affair.

Some versions have the Ishpeming cutting the entire canal in two days. Many claim the courier arrived on horseback while others say he took the train. In perhaps the tallest version of the tale, recorded by the Duluth Evening Herald in 1929, the canal was created with one perfectly executed explosion.

A group led by William Sargent, “under the cover of darkness … worked frantically with pick and shovel. … As daylight approached and they realized they would not finish the task, leaders

called for dynamite. … When the debris settled, the dynamiters were rewarded by the water rushing through the ditch thus created.”

The story, however, fails to consider that William Sargent was 11 years old in April 1871.

So how did these tales take root? Like all good myths, they contain some truth: a little hand digging and a couple kegs of blasting powder were used to break up a stubborn patch of frozen gravel on April 29. There was an injunction, but it did not arrive until nearly a week after the Ishpeming had finished its initial cut. The lawsuits dragged on until 1877,

This cover illustration from the June 3, 1945, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune Magazine combines several different versions of the legend of the digging of Duluth’s ship canal, the city’s defining creation myth. (Image courtesy of University of Minnesota Duluth’s Kathryn A. Martin Library)

but never interfered with the canal’s operation.

The legends likely started as elaborations of true events told time and again, becoming canonical after they were set into type. The earliest version found in print comes from Howard’s book.

Roger Munger and his family told versions of the legend to newspaper reporters beginning in the 1890s, and it was reprinted when he died in 1913. His recollection appeared in his sonin-law Dwight Woodbridge’s 1910 history of Duluth:

“I was engaged by the citizens of Duluth to dig the channel. We began work on a Saturday and by night Superior knew what we were about. At once the people over there began to scurry around to get a federal injunction restraining us. I hired a gang of several hundred men … and we worked all that day and far into the night. … When the Superior people came over Monday morning there was the channel open and they couldn’t do anything.”

Perhaps the stories perpetuate because people just can’t resist telling them, facts be damned. Munger himself helped hire the Ishpeming — he knew full well his account was a fib. Bridge was 14 years old in 1870 and did not live in the United States, let alone Duluth.

Jerome Cooley, who moved to Duluth in 1873, recorded his version in 1922. Otto Wieland, born in 1871, told his tale to the Works Project Administration in 1942.

The Minneapolis Tribune featured its account in 1945. Duluth teacher Dora Mary MacDonald retold it in her 1949 book “This Is Duluth,” researched in part by her elementary school students. Even today several websites present the myth as fact.

Despite the tallness of the tale, the legend reinforces a central theme of Duluth’s formative years: the determined self-sufficiency of its founding generation, who never backed away from a challenge and stood up to confront every obstacle they encountered. u

Roger Munger, one of Duluth’s first aldermen, hired the Ishpeming to cut Duluth’s ship canal. Decades later, he helped create the myth that it was dug by hand in two days. (Lithograph image courtesy of Zenith City Press)

Duluth: legendary city of the unsalted seas

By Tony Dierckins Special to the News Tribune

The legend of the digging of Duluth’s ship canal, that 100 stout men shoveled it out in 48 hours, is just one of many myths surrounding the Zenith City. At the risk of angering advertising copywriters and civic boosters, let’s cast some light on some of those claims.

Duluth’s iconic aerial bridge over that infamous ship canal wasn’t the world’s first lift bridge as many believe. The first was designed for Duluth but built in Chicago in 1893. Duluth’s bridge, however, is unique: It is the planet’s only lift bridge with a top span.

The span is a leftover from its days as a transfer bridge (1905-1929), which many say was the first of its kind. It wasn’t. The first was built in Spain, also in 1893. But Duluth’s bridge was the world’s only transfer bridge made of stiff-girded steel, and the only such bridge ever built in North America.

Some have even tried to create their own myths regarding Duluth’s transfer bridge. In 2005 a woman told a reporter she had been conceived on the bridge’s gondola car as it crossed the canal (she called herself “Aerial”).

If true, her conception would have been a remarkable feat, but perhaps not one worth boasting about: The gondola always had an operator on board, was often crowded, and included no private spaces — and its passage took less than a minute.

Another person claimed that he was born on the gondola the first week of September 1927. It was a stormy night, and his parents were on the gondola

— rushing from their Park Point home to a hospital — when lightning struck, stalling the car. He came into the world “right there on the bucket of the bridge.”

But records show clear skies over Duluth that night. And in case of a power failure the gondola could be moved across the canal using a hand crank.

Further, in 1927 Duluth was debating how

to replace the increasingly obsolete bridge, and newspapers reported its every malfunction. Certainly if a woman had been forced to give birth on a derelict gondola it would have been front-page news. Yet no corroborating stories exist.

One popular Duluth myth attributes the quote “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in Duluth” to Mark Twain. He never said it.

There are many remarkable stories involving Duluth’s unique Aerial Transfer Bridge, but there is no evidence anyone was ever born –— let alone conceived –— on the bridge’s gondola car as it crossed the Duluth Ship Canal. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)

The joke dates back to 1879, when London actor James Quinn, after being asked if he had ever seen so bad a winter, allegedly replied, “Yes, just such an one last summer!” While in Paris in 1880, Twain repeated Quinn’s quip, but he did not mention Duluth.

Continued on page 34

Twain never spent an entire summer in Duluth, but he did stay a day or two in the Zenith City in June 1886 on his way from Buffalo, New York, to visit his mother in Iowa. Twain also visited for a week in July 1895 and delivered several lectures at First Methodist Church. None of the newspaper coverage of his visits mentioned the quote.

The Duluth Herald first made reference to the joke on March 15, 1900, while responding to a Life Magazine story calling Duluth the “Meanest City in the World.” The Life article quoted an unnamed

Population: 86,319

Swede who allegedly said, ‘Da vorst vinter a effe spen en may life bean von sommor vat a leve en Dulute, Manasouta,” (The worst winter I ever spent in my life being one summer that I lived in Duluth, Minnesota.)

By then, at least according to the Herald, the statement was old news and “unworthy of comment, for it is stale and decayed. Every new (Duluth) resident has heard that joke before he learned the streets.”

Three months later a Duluth News Tribune

2010

Population: 86,265

Mark Twain, who visited Duluth twice —– and both times in the summer —– never once said “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in Duluth.” (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)

article warned that “One of these days someone will tell that moldy old chestnut about the finest winter he ever spent being the summer he spent in Duluth, and one of these husky commercial travelers, who have been here and know all about our climate, will smite him with an uppercut and break his slanderous jaw. The truth shall come out in time.”

Neither article mentioned Twain.

Oh, and that other “moldy old chestnut” about Duluth? The one that goes “Duluth was once home to more millionaires per capita than any other city in the U.S.”? It is a claim no statistical report has ever supported. The “millionaire” concept was then rather new when that one got started, around 1905. Duluth was among at least a half-dozen U.S. cities making the same claim. u

VIRTUAL VISIT

While Duluth had plenty of millionaires –— perhaps none more well-known than Chester Congdon (pictured) –— there are no studies that show it ever had “more millionaires per capita than any other city in the U.S.”

Face-to-face interaction with your Essentia Health provider from the convenience of home or work. We’ve introduced virtual video visits, allowing you to receive care from your provider, right where you are. Virtual visits are now available for nearly all clinic appointment types in most specialty areas.

Virtual Visits are done through the MyHealth website or the MyChart app using your own computer, tablet or smartphone.

If you have concerns or symptoms related to COVID-19 *, Essentia Health is providing E-Visits at no cost for evaluation. To learn more, or to start an E-visit, go to EssentiaHealth.org/COVID-19.

*Testing ordered as a result of screening may incur a charge.

Population: 87,213 (state estimate)

(Photo courtesy of Glensheen Historic Estate)

Benedictine Sisters and Duluth Clinic physicians lay foundation for health care

When a small group of Benedictine Sisters opened the doors of St. Mary’s Hospital in 1888, they didn’t know what the future held for them. They were simply following the call of St. Benedict to care for the sick and the call of an

abbott who saw a need in a city at the edge of the wilderness.

Led by Mother Scholastica Kerst, the Sisters opened St. Mary’s Hospital on Feb. 2, 1888, in a four-story building at 20th Avenue West and West

Third Street. Working with physicians and nurses, the Sisters laid the foundation for Catholic health care in Duluth. Just 10 years later, they opened a new 200-bed hospital at Fifth Avenue East and East Third Street. By 1898, Duluth had the largest and best-equipped hospital north of the Twin Cities.

But the Sisters’ pioneering spirit and ministry extended beyond the walls of their hospital. To generate income, they offered one of the first health insurance policies.

Continued on page 38

The Duluth Clinic’s five founders (seated) and their staff pose in front of their new building in 1927, just 12 years after establishing their joint practice in Duluth.

Mother Scholastica Kerst (seated) chose her biological sister, Sister Alexia Kerst, as the first administrator of St. Mary’s Hospital, which opened in 1888.

Sister Amata Mackett became known as “Sister Lumberjack” for her visits to logging camps across the Northland to sell $1 to $5 insurance tickets that guaranteed loggers hospital care if they were injured or ill.

At the turn of the 20th century, Duluth was a rapidly

growing city of 88,000 that drew dozens of physicians to start small or solo practices.

In 1915, Dr. Edward Tuohy proposed a radical idea – that he and four other specialists come together to create a multispecialty practice. Such an idea was almost unheard of in America but the

Mayo brothers in Dr. Tuohy’s hometown of Rochester were trying it.

The Duluth Clinic was founded by Dr. Tuohy, a pathologist; Dr. William Coventry, an obstetrician; Dr. John Winter, an ear, nose and throat specialist; Dr. Oliver W. Rowe, a pediatrician; and Dr. T. Leete Chapman, a surgeon. The founders’ vision was to better serve patients by collaborating on their care. They also committed themselves to improving the lives of their patients and the community they served.

Throughout the 20th century, St. Mary’s Hospital and the Duluth Clinic relied on one another and grew together. In 1997, the two entities came together as the St. Mary’s Duluth Clinic Health System. It was the first time in the United States that a Catholic-sponsored hospital affiliated with a secular medical practice. By 2008, the health system had grown and evolved again into Essentia Health.

Today, Essentia Health is an integrated health system serving communities in Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota. It has 13 hospitals, 69 clinics, six long-term care facilities, three assisted living facilities, three independent living facilities, five ambulance services and a research institute.

The legacy of the Duluth Clinic’s founders and the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery lives on in Essentia Health’s 14,500 employees and their mission: “We are called to make a healthy difference in people’s lives. u

The first St. Mary’s Hospital opened at 20th Avenue West and Third Street in 1888.

Just 10 years later, the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery opened a new 200-bed hospital at Fifth Avenue East and East Third Street.