Paul Lundgren
Then and Now: Denfeld High School
This aerial photo comparison shows Denfeld High School as it looked in 1947 and in 2025. The building first opened in 1926 — 100 years ago — and has seen several additions since then, including a gynasium wing in 1987 and a science wing and common area in 2011. The athletic stadium on campus saw a major renovation in 2002 when a new grandstand was built and the natural grass was replaced with artificial turf. (more…)
Postcard from the Kitchi Gammi Club in 1916
This postcard was mailed Jan 12. 1916 — 110 years ago today. It shows the Kitchi Gammi Club building at 831 E. Superior St., which opened two years prior. (more…)
Postcard from St. Mary’s Hospital
This postcard, published by the Rotograph Company of New York City and printed in Germany, shows St. Mary’s Hospital in Duluth. The card has no postmark, but Rotograph’s postcard operation ran from 1904 to 1911. (more…)
Ernie Nevers pro football debut was exhibition game in 1926
On Jan. 2, 1926 — one hundred years ago today — Willow River native and Superior Central High School standout athlete Ernie Nevers made his pro football debut in an exhibition game in Jacksonville, Florida. He represented the Jacksonville All Stars in a much-hyped game against Red Grange’s Chicago Bears. (more…)
Original Chester Bowl warming house opened at end of 1925
The Jan. 2, 1926 Duluth Herald reported on the recent opening of a warming house at Chester Park, one month ahead of the national ski tournament held there. A new chalet was built at the ski hill in 1972. It was named the Thom Storm Chalet following Storm’s 2015 retirement as Chester Bowl’s director. An expansion and renovation project for that chalet is planned for later this year.
2025: The Year in Duluth Gig Posters
Perfect Duluth Day’s collection of gig posters goes back to 1976, so there are now 50 years of bulletin-board art compiled on this website. But in this particular post we focus on just one year, 2025. (more…)
PDD Shop Talk: The Usual Spiel
Keeping Duluth’s Duluthiest website running with new content every day has been an ongoing financial challenge for 22 years, but Perfect Duluth Day is still here, still free to read and still kicking out the daily goods. Advertising revenue keeps the operation going, but donations help us do more and do it better.
That’s why we occasionally toss up a post like this one to remind everyone that donations are a big help. (more…)
The Most Read Saturday Essays of 2025
Perfect Duluth Day’s “Saturday Essay” series has now run for ten years. The second half of that decade has seen Jim Richardson dominate the annual list of most-read compositions. Since 2020, Google Analytics stats show Richardon’s essays have landed in 21 of the 25 top-five slots. Long live Lake Superior Aquaman! (more…)
PDD Bandcamp Playlist: Holiday Sampler, Volume Two
In the interest of making your yuletide as gay as possible, here’s another sampling of Christmas or “Christmasish” tunes by artists in the Duluth music scene. (more…)
Looking out from Enger Tower circa 1965
This uncredited photo shows a view of Duluth from Enger Tower looking out over Observation Hill to the downtown and waterfront. It is dated 1965. (more…)
Bob Dylan’s Spirit Mountain Adventure
Bob Dylan arrived in Duluth for a holiday ski party at Spirit Mountain on Dec. 20, 1975. The ski hill had just opened one year prior. (more…)
Postcard from ‘Our Little Home’ in Duluth
This postcard was mailed 115 years ago from Duluth, and therefore presumably shows a home in Duluth that might still be standing. (more…)
Postcard from a Bird’s Eye View of the West End in Duluth
This postcard of Duluth’s friendly West End was mailed 115 years ago today — Dec. 8, 1910. The recipient was Mrs. Joseph Lindquist of Kerkhoven, Minnesota. The perspective is from the Point of Rocks at West Fourth Street, looking southwest. (more…)
Postcard from the Duluth Carnegie Library
This undated postcard, published circa 1910, shows the Carnegie Library in Downtown Duluth at 101 W. Second St. The building was designed by Edwin S. Radcliffe and Charles Willoughby Adolph Rudolf. It opened in April 1902, serving as Duluth’s main library until 1980. Since then it has functioned as an office building.
Grassfires: An Old Duluth Tradition
If my memory is to be trusted, this bookmark was given out to Duluth public school students circa 1980. That’s how the one shown here would have landed in my possession. Maybe someone from the fire department was a guest speaker at Laura MacArthur Elementary and passed them out. (more…)
Then and Now: Cathedral and Marshall
This aerial photo comparison shows Duluth Cathedral High School circa 1970 and the same campus in 2025 as Duluth Marshall School. (more…)
Duluth-area Hockey Pin-back Buttons
With hockey season well underway, we’ve pulled out the hockey-related buttons from Perfect Duluth Day’s larger button collection. (more…)
The inaugural Christmas City of the North Parade was in 1961
Debate about when the first Christmas City of the North Parade happened has been rekindled numerous times since 2008, when KBJR-TV promoted the 48th annual parade as the “50th annual.” That year Andrew Krueger, then a copy editor at the Duluth News Tribune, set the record straight, digging through newspaper archives that strongly suggested, but maybe didn’t definitively prove, the parade was first held in 1961.
KBJR, then and now, points to 1958 as the first year of the parade.
It is finally time to set aside unreasonable doubt. The short version of the story is this: Krueger was correct. The first Christmas City of the North Parade was held Nov. 17, 1961. (more…)
Gas Freighter Elvina
The November 1910 issue of Power Boating magazine included a photo from the Duluth Ship Canal.
The caption reads:
Elvina, a 53-foot gasoline freighter, “beating it” out of Duluth harbor on her way to Cornucopia, 40 miles across Lake Superior, which she makes back and forth every day in the season. With 40 tons of freight and passengers, as shown in the photo, she makes ten miles an hour. Her power plant equipment is a four-cylinder, Campbell, 40-horsepower machine.
Postcard from Spirit Lake in Duluth
This postcard might have been mailed 100 years ago today. The year on the postmark has worn out over time, but is clearly from the 1920s and seems most likely to be 1925. The date is Nov. 8. The image shows a view of Spirit Lake on the St. Louis River from the shores of Duluth in the Morgan Park neighborhood. (more…)
Selective Focus: November Aurora in the City
Northern lights were visible throughout the region last night, including areas in Duluth where excessive artificial light normally wash out the low-intensity glow of the aurora. Collected here are a few Instagram posts highlighting scenes from the night sky. (more…)
Then and Now: Nopeming Sanatorium
The above aerial photo comparison shows changes spanning roughly 80 years at the 40-acre site of the Nopeming Sanatorium in Midway Township, just outside Duluth. (more…)
Minnesota Power & Light Substation Fire of 1925
The 1925 fire at the Minnesota Power & Light Substation was not necessarily a particularly significant moment in Duluth history — the Duluth Herald offered just a simple photo and caption for its coverage — but the internet does not contain many photos of the building, so this fuzzy newspaper image has some moderate historic value.
The fire occurred on Oct. 25, 1925 — 100 years ago today. (more…)
Postcard from the Minnesota Point Lighthouse Ruins
This postcard was mailed 115 years ago. It shows the ruins of the Minnesota Point Lighthouse, which ended its run as a functional lighthouse in 1885. The faded postmark on the card is from February 1910. (more…)
North Country Trail in Wisconsin: Returning to the Border
During a group hike in spring 2024, I covered a new section of the North Country Trail in Wrenshall. At the time I didn’t think much about how my essay series is about the trail “in Wisconsin,” yet almost all of that hike was in Minnesota.
A few years ago, the Wisconsin section of the North Country Trail was all in Wisconsin, because it hadn’t been built yet near the Minnesota state line. The Minnesota side of the trail ended in the woods at the border, and the only way to start the trail at the Wisconsin side was to hike various highways to get to the parts of the trail that had been built.
Now that an official border route through the woods exists, however, the trail enters Wisconsin and runs for about a mile, slants over into Minnesota for about two miles, then swings back into Wisconsin.
There was a small part of that new section in Wrenshall I didn’t see on that group hike, because there was snow on the ground, groups move slower than individuals, and the rest of the group didn’t share my quest to cover every single bit of the trail. So I went back in the fall. (more…)