Chapter VII

St. Louis County:

Duluth

Duluth

In its astonishing liberality, nature has put into one single region the sources of the river of rivers, the Mississippi, and the world's greatest lakes, a vast richness of forest and fantastic mineral wealth, a splendid wilderness, now transformed in part into fields, cleared by the hand of man, with a soil promising success to his endeavors. White man arrived in this region - the western end of Lake Superior - on the heels of the earliest explorers, and as fur traders they got a glimpse of the wealth awaiting them. The area extending from Lake Superior to the Canadian border, which was established as St. Louis County in 1855, embraces 6,661 square miles, or more than the combined area of Rhode Island and Connecticut. In this largest county in Minnesota are 774 square miles of lakes, and the landscape is even more reminiscent of Finland than is that of any other part of the state. In 1860 there were only 406 persons living in the entire county, and there is reason to believe that this figure included many Indians and half-breeds.' At that time the county was divided into but four townships: Carp River, Duluth, Fond du Lac and Oneota; sixty years later there were 69, and in 1950, about ten more than that. For immigrants from the distant north of Europe, the whole area was like a Promised Land, and it became the center of heaviest Finnish settlement in the United States.

At all times of the year the sun rises above Duluth over the blue water or gray ice of the world's biggest fresh water lake. At times this lake rages with oceanic force, at times it is like an alluring, sparkling mirror. Its surface is 603 feet above sea

1. Duluth and St. Louis County, I. p. 153

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