Fond du Lac

By Tom Olsen tolsen@duluthnews.com

About 14 miles west of downtown sits Duluth’s oldest inhabited area. Fond du Lac was the site of a Chippewa settlement as far back as the 16th century.

It was here that French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut arrived in the fall of 1679, becoming the first European known to visit what is now Duluth as he sought to broker peace among warring Native American tribes, which have inhabited the western Lake Superior area for thousands for years.

French for “bottom of the lake,” Fond du Lac would soon open for fur trading, with some historical sources indicating Hudson’s Bay Co. may have established the area’s first post as early as 1692. In the early 1800s, John Jacob Aster opened an American Fur Co. post a few blocks east of what is now Chambers Grove Park.

Fond du Lac would go on to serve as the location of two treaty signings between the United States government and the Anishinaabe people, in 1826 and 1847.

By the mid-1800s, beaver pelts had fallen out of fashion, and the area’s economy turned toward logging, copper mining and brownstone quarrying. The village of Fond du Lac was formally incorporated in 1857 and annexed into the city of Duluth in 1895.

As Duluth’s westernmost point, Fond du Lac today is a quiet, isolated neighborhood, sitting about two miles from the nearest residential area, Gary-New Duluth. In fact, the neighborhood is located closer to Carlton than it is to downtown Duluth.

Fond du Lac serves as the eastern terminus of Minnesota Highway 210, which runs through nearby Jay Cooke State Park and all the way to the North Dakota border. It’s also where

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Fond du Lac includes some of the city’s oldest homes and gathering spots, including Chambers Grove Park, a popular picnic space dating back to the 1870s.