Bayview Heights

By Tom Olsen tolsen@duluthnews.com

Located atop a steep hill overlooking West Duluth, Bayview Heights is largely isolated from the rest of the city. But it serves as Duluth’s front door, offering picturesque views of the city and harbor below as travelers follow scenic Skyline Parkway or descend Thompson Hill along northbound Interstate 35.

One could be excused for mistaking this western neighborhood as part of Proctor. In fact, residents send their children to Proctor schools, including the neighborhood’s namesake Bay View Elementary School.

For all practical purposes, Bayview Heights forms one larger community with Proctor — though the cities are officially divided by the appropriately named Boundary Avenue, which roughly connects the top of Spirit Mountain to the South St. Louis County Fairgrounds. Many neighborhood residents live in Zenith Terrace, the city’s largest manufactured-home park.

The neighborhood was first platted in the 1880s to accommodate anticipated growth in the fledgling industrial city of Duluth. But it never achieved significant population growth — perhaps in part due to its elevation — though the neighborhood did serve to accommodate rail yard workers in the neighboring city then still known as Proctorknott.

Today the neighborhood is mainly accessed via

U.S. Highway 2 or Vinland Street, but in its early days the commute was made by a lesser-known rail incline. Known by various names, including the Duluth Belt Line Railway, it began operation in 1889, carrying passengers 600 feet uphill from 61st Avenue West and Grand Avenue to 77th Avenue West and Vinland Street.

While the rail shuttered in 1916 as new transportation options emerged, its original path can still be seen more than a century later, with power lines now occupying the clearing.