June 21, 2019 Friday Day 33
We got up fairly early and went to the hotel breakfast. The Point Marina Inn provided a very good breakfast. Hot items, lots of fruit and chocolate muffins, but a bit crowded. It was peaceful looking out to the bay and watching the early sailboats and the slow moving freighters. A very nice hotel that was not cheap, but was a good value, except that they was no ability to charge the electric car. After breakfast we took a walk around Canal park, but by 10:00 we drove into and around downtown.
Much of the downtown rests on a hill that slopes down to the lake. At the top, on Skyline Parkway is Enger Tower which at five stories high is the tallest structure in Duluth, not very impressive for a boy from NYC, but it offered impressive, panoramic views of Duluth Harbor and St. Louis Bay. It was dedicated in 1939 by Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha of Norway, something I doubt any NYC skyscraper can claim.
The part of the downtown that we saw, while well maintained, seemed old and almost tired. The only modern building we saw was a very interesting large public library. In fairness we did not see all of the downtown and were not able to visit most of the town's attractions.
For our main event we went to the St. Louis County Heritage & Arts Center, The Depot. We parked on the parking deck in a commercial lot next to the Depot. It afforded a great view of the legacy trains and train station. It had an electric charging station which if used , waived the parking fee. It was a Chargepoint station, but I could not get it to work. I called customer service and after several attempts they got it working. That company has great customer service, it has never let me down when I needed a charge.
This facility was built in 1892 as Duluth's Union Depot. It contains four museums, a living history exhibit, and Depot Square, a recreation of Duluth as it existed during the second decade of the 20th century, when the city was at its apogee. The volunteer staff at the museums was vey engaged and informative. The Art Institute had some attractive works,
the Veterans Hall had interesting histories of Duluth service men and women, and Immigration Waiting Room which recreated the facility as it existed in the first part of the 20th century and had a wonderful narrative of the waves of and diverse sources of immigration that populated Duluth and northern Minnesota. However to me the most interesting were the exhibits showcasing the natural resources of the area and how they were exploited to help build the US and to a lesser extent Europe. Timber that was "limitless" was logged out in two generations. There are no old growth forests in this region. Iron and copper ore, and to a lesser extent coal, were extracted from the ground in record quantities and that became the foundation of the growth of the US into an industrial power when steel was king. Agriculture followed the clear cutting of the forests. And all of this product was shipped out of the ports on Lake Superior, primarily Duluth/Superior.
The Railroad Museum was fun. Duluth formerly was a major rail hub and the museum displayed lots of vintage cars and locomotives. There is no longer rail passenger service from Duluth (although there is an effort to restore rail service to Minneapolis) and we did not have time to take the trip on the North Shore Senic Railroad.
Duluth's early history was as a trading outpost, the most lucrative of which was fur trading on which John Jacob Astor built his fortune. He sold his business before changing fashions in Europe away from fur hats crashed that business. After the fur trade declined copper and then timber drove the economy. In the mid 19th century with the opening of the Sault Ste Marie canal and the completion of the rail line to the Pacific, Duluth became the only port with access to both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. With the opening of the Mesabi Range in northern Minnesota shipments of iron ore to steel mills in Chicago and Cleveland made Duluth one of the fastest growing cities in the US. The panic of 1873 crashed the economy. However the timber and mining industries rebounded and around the turn of the century Duluth was the busiest port by tonnage in the US and had the most millionaires per capita. In the second half of the 20th century and long economic decline set in with the decline of high grade iron ore in the Mesabi range and then the decline of the US steel industry. Even with all its economic ups and downs, Duluth, combined with Superior remains the busiest port in the Great Lakes. It is also the largest US (Thunder Bay in Canada is larger) city on Lake Superior.
We left the museum about 2:30 with 38 electric miles over the bridge spanning the harbor on our way to Wisconsin.
We got up fairly early and went to the hotel breakfast. The Point Marina Inn provided a very good breakfast. Hot items, lots of fruit and chocolate muffins, but a bit crowded. It was peaceful looking out to the bay and watching the early sailboats and the slow moving freighters. A very nice hotel that was not cheap, but was a good value, except that they was no ability to charge the electric car. After breakfast we took a walk around Canal park, but by 10:00 we drove into and around downtown.
Much of the downtown rests on a hill that slopes down to the lake. At the top, on Skyline Parkway is Enger Tower which at five stories high is the tallest structure in Duluth, not very impressive for a boy from NYC, but it offered impressive, panoramic views of Duluth Harbor and St. Louis Bay. It was dedicated in 1939 by Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha of Norway, something I doubt any NYC skyscraper can claim.
The part of the downtown that we saw, while well maintained, seemed old and almost tired. The only modern building we saw was a very interesting large public library. In fairness we did not see all of the downtown and were not able to visit most of the town's attractions.
For our main event we went to the St. Louis County Heritage & Arts Center, The Depot. We parked on the parking deck in a commercial lot next to the Depot. It afforded a great view of the legacy trains and train station. It had an electric charging station which if used , waived the parking fee. It was a Chargepoint station, but I could not get it to work. I called customer service and after several attempts they got it working. That company has great customer service, it has never let me down when I needed a charge.
This facility was built in 1892 as Duluth's Union Depot. It contains four museums, a living history exhibit, and Depot Square, a recreation of Duluth as it existed during the second decade of the 20th century, when the city was at its apogee. The volunteer staff at the museums was vey engaged and informative. The Art Institute had some attractive works,
the Veterans Hall had interesting histories of Duluth service men and women, and Immigration Waiting Room which recreated the facility as it existed in the first part of the 20th century and had a wonderful narrative of the waves of and diverse sources of immigration that populated Duluth and northern Minnesota. However to me the most interesting were the exhibits showcasing the natural resources of the area and how they were exploited to help build the US and to a lesser extent Europe. Timber that was "limitless" was logged out in two generations. There are no old growth forests in this region. Iron and copper ore, and to a lesser extent coal, were extracted from the ground in record quantities and that became the foundation of the growth of the US into an industrial power when steel was king. Agriculture followed the clear cutting of the forests. And all of this product was shipped out of the ports on Lake Superior, primarily Duluth/Superior.
The Railroad Museum was fun. Duluth formerly was a major rail hub and the museum displayed lots of vintage cars and locomotives. There is no longer rail passenger service from Duluth (although there is an effort to restore rail service to Minneapolis) and we did not have time to take the trip on the North Shore Senic Railroad.
Duluth's early history was as a trading outpost, the most lucrative of which was fur trading on which John Jacob Astor built his fortune. He sold his business before changing fashions in Europe away from fur hats crashed that business. After the fur trade declined copper and then timber drove the economy. In the mid 19th century with the opening of the Sault Ste Marie canal and the completion of the rail line to the Pacific, Duluth became the only port with access to both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. With the opening of the Mesabi Range in northern Minnesota shipments of iron ore to steel mills in Chicago and Cleveland made Duluth one of the fastest growing cities in the US. The panic of 1873 crashed the economy. However the timber and mining industries rebounded and around the turn of the century Duluth was the busiest port by tonnage in the US and had the most millionaires per capita. In the second half of the 20th century and long economic decline set in with the decline of high grade iron ore in the Mesabi range and then the decline of the US steel industry. Even with all its economic ups and downs, Duluth, combined with Superior remains the busiest port in the Great Lakes. It is also the largest US (Thunder Bay in Canada is larger) city on Lake Superior.
We left the museum about 2:30 with 38 electric miles over the bridge spanning the harbor on our way to Wisconsin.
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