Smithville

By Brooks Johnson bjohnson@duluthnews.com

Squeezed between historic Morgan Park and expanding Riverside sits Smithville, a pastoral residential stretch below Bardon Peak. Crossed today by Skyline Parkway, the Munger Trail, Grand Avenue and by Stewart Creek down to the river near Munger Landing, the woodsy hillside habitat was first platted by new settlers along Spirit Lake as a “tourist retreat,” according to Zenith City Online.

Beyond the Spirit Lake Hotel, it eventually was home to the Smithville (elementary) School, a post office and the Work People’s College, a folk high school/radical labor college started by Finnish socialists that operated from 1907 to 1941. Tourism and labor politics — would it be Duluth without?

Lately Smithville has gotten a boost from a new $10 million housing project and a reconstructed Grand Avenue — plus the neighborhood lays claim to the new aerospace-focused Ikonics plant.