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The 7-mile stretch of Park Point includes 6 miles of public beach.
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Much of Park Point runs along a single roadway, Minnesota Avenue.
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The Park Point Community Club at Lafayette Square has playing fields, beach access and inside space for hosting many events from the active neighborhood.
Stretching for 7 miles, the skinny sandspit of Park Point in Duluth is the quintessential beach settlement and the birthplace of the city.
One side of the spit looks out over the blue waves or screaming storms of Lake Superior; the other side marches along Superior Bay with views of passing freighters and recreational boats or birds soaring over the harbor.
Sandwiched between two waters, Park Point seems so fragile, but it’s been here for about 5,000 years. Coupled with its shorter twin, the 3-mile long Wisconsin Point across the Superior Entry, it becomes the world’s largest freshwater sandbar.
In 1679 Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, first visited the Ojibway community of Onigamiinsing – the “little portage” as Duluth is still called in that language. By 1852, the first non-Indian resident, George Stuntz, had established three buildings for a trading post and living space.
Just one year after the La Pointe Treaty of 1854 ceded Ojibway land for the new city, Robert Jefferson built his two-story house on the Point, a locus for local politics and culture and home to a saloon, a meeting and voting place and the literal home of such early city dignitaries as Judge John Carey and Thomas Preston Foster, who started Duluth’s first newspaper, The Minnesotan, in 1869.
It is even said that Duluth got its name from a Park Pointer – the Reverend Joseph Wilson – who was offered two town lots for his suggestion. “Duluth sounds good,” he’s claimed to have said, after reading about Greysolon.
By 1871, the long peninsula became an island when Duluth dug out the ship canal that separates the Point from Canal Park, the other part of Minnesota Point. After nearly 20 years, Park Point reunited with the mainland with the 1905 opening of Duluth’s signature structure, the Aerial Bridge, first as a suspended ferry, later as a lift-span roadway.
Much has changed for Duluth and for Park Point in the ensuing years. But some things remain the same: Many Duluthians feel at home on the Point’s beaches, and Point residents continue to create a diverse, contentious and quirky community on a unique strip of Lake Superior land.
Location, location, location are the three keys to real estate appeal, and Park Point has them all.
Perhaps that is why such a small strip of land – most traversed by a single road – has so much crammed onto it. Along this sandbar are more than 300 residences, four marinas and an RV site, two churches, two nursing homes, a fire hall (with a single firefighter), one bed-and-breakfast inn, a hotel, two gift stores, a city park with a changing and concession building, the past world champion Duluth Rowing Club, boat repair business, a community club, U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army Reserve stations, an airport, miles of beach and end-of-the-point trails that lead to a remnant of the oldest structure standing in Duluth – the Zero Point Lighthouse from which all locations of the day were surveyed (hence the “zero point”).
In the past, the Point was home to a cemetery where the S-Curve is now, to Oatka Boat Club, Sea Scouts and Keel Club.
All 6 miles of beach have always been public. Every day, strollers and gawkers, thinkers and dogwalkers, runners and frolicking kids appear on the lakeside. In November and December, wetsuited surfers, perhaps sporting blue lips, catch the frequent high waves on their longboards.
Park Point Recreational Area, 4 miles from the bridge, is a popular summer place for beach parties, kite flyers, swimmers (there’s a lifeguard, in season) and Frisbee tossers. Spread the width of the point, the park abuts Community Sailing Program docks and launching ramp on the bay side.
Beyond is Sky Harbor Airport, a base for both land and seaplanes, and now a source of controversy: the requirement for clearing the approach to the runway threatens a swath of old-growth pine forest on the last 2 miles of Park Point. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has designated this section a protected Scientific and Natural Area, and its hiking trails are beloved parts of the Point.
Along those trails (some heavy with poison ivy) are strange, affecting traces of city history: An abandoned cabin, the last of several in the pine forest and a stout concrete warehouse that’s a little spooky, heavily graffittied and once used by the U.S. Lighthouse Service. And the remains of the Zero Point Lighthouse.
Popular annual events draw even more visitors.
The Park Point Art Fair, founded in 1970 by local artist Pat Joyal, is the signature event of the Park Point Community Club in late June. The juried fair features some of the finest regional artists, many with national careers, and brings diverse offerings from pottery to photography, garden artwork to home products. The art fair is so successful that the city requested to move it to Bayfront Park, but Park Point didn’t let it go. Some fair proceeds fund the community club’s Summer Youth Program and environmental work.
Another summer event is the Park Point Rummage Sale, which grew out of the Art Fair. Savvy Point residents, noting hundreds of people streamed down Minnesota Avenue for the fair, put surplus possessions out in impromptu yard sales. Almost 30 years ago, the annual sale shifted to its own weekend, falling before Grandma’s Marathon in June. It’s 4 miles of everything you can imagine, this year including guitars and bronze boat fittings, a snare drum, a Ford Fairlane, piles of sweaters, souvenir shotglasses, new art, busted chairs, a Star Wars lunchbox and handknit cellphone cozies.
At Christmastime, the Point also features a spectacular light display by resident Marcia Hales. The sparkling arches and lights, angels, penguins and warming-house treats are amazing in a Park Point back yard. It’s become a gathering spot and, for many families, a traditional holiday visit.
Residents and visitors to the Point face the same fact of life: getting “bridged” – waiting for the Aerial Lift Bridge to come down after boats go under it. The Park Point Community Club newsletter The Breeze once featured a series by Dick Gould, a retired businessman, a hunter, fisherman, boater and passionate Park Point resident and now Community Club president, who tracked down what people did while bridged: practicing knot-tying, cleaning the car, flossing one’s teeth, catching up on reading. That need to endure being bridged reveals the patience, a cranky kind of grace and a sense of humor that typifies Park Point culture – along with a hearty do-it-yourself attitude.
The demand for waterfront or water-accessed properties all around Lake Superior has put pressure on the Point, with its limited space, available infrastructure and delicate beach ecosystems.
Also delicate is the balance between generational residents’ income levels and their new-found (or newly imposed) land riches that result in what seems like runaway value increase and, hence, significantly higher taxes. One resident who grew up on the Point bought his bayside house on a 40-by-100-foot lot (standard on the Point) in 1977 for $18,000. Today, after a $50,000 renovation, the property has been valued at $395,000.
The Point’s residential housing stock runs from well-worn tiny clapboard cottages to mansions incorporating square footage vertically on the small lots.
While driving down Minnesota Avenue, you might see Captain Tom Mackay’s red pickup truck with its slogan: “Park Point’s Affluent Poor.” For Tom, a lifelong resident, the slogan reflects those residents who find themselves land rich and income challenged.
“I grew up on the lake side. In 1977, I moved to the bay side behind Hearding Island. It’s two different worlds.”
He has a flock of boats – even ice boats – in his bayside backyard, one reason to prefer Point life. Tom has a long love affair with boats. A Navy vet, he got his master’s license and captained many years for The Vista Fleet. He never had a problem being bridged. “I could just hop in my boat and go to work.”
He might have made the Navy his career, but “I really love the fresh water. I’ve just loved living on Park Point and on Lake Superior. It’s such a privilege. It’s been my life.”
Some long-time residents might grumble about newcomers, but many are warm to new neighbors. At least that’s the experience of Kathy and Ken Kollodge, who moved there this year. Kathy paints; Ken is a photographer. They are well-traveled and sophisticated, down-to-earth and open. They fit well into the passionate community.
Their house, not huge, is emblematic of the place. Built by Park Point contractor Tom Reistad of Ideal Homes, it’s traditional in its contours, but clad in galvanized steel siding, sky-colored with bright trim. Befitting a beach setting, the home is filled with light, art, images of nature and casual comfort. The house is bayside and crossing to the lake always brings something new. “Every morning I think, ‘I wonder what it’s gonna look like today,’’ Kathy says. “Then we walk over the dune, and, wow, it’s different every day.”
“We hear the lake at night, roaring,” says Ken. “We love to walk across the street to the lake at night.”
They both describe the perceptive kindness of their neighbors. When their modular home arrived two hours early and they weren’t there to photograph it as they intended, Kathy says, their neighbor Ellen Dunlop took pictures of the house landing and made prints for them.
One neighboring couple sent a big basket with fruit and cheese; another invited them immediately to supper.
Point residents adapt even to major changes, as Bob Ouellette found when a new hotel grew up near his home. Bob and his wife, Val, live in the very first house on the Point – lakeside right by the ship canal where people stream along the piers to watch big boats. This was home to the ferryman when everything crossed the canal by water before the bridge was built in 1905.
Bob has researched his deed and discovered that the first owner in 1904 was named Johnson, who worked for the Duluth Railway and Ferry Service. “It’s a good place to watch a storm,” Bob notes of his bay window on the ship canal. Almost too good – in the high-water years of the ’80s, waves came over the piers and knocked his fence down.
Bob hears the boats’ huge steam whistles and the bridge’s sonorous answer. He liked the deep tones of the old foghorn – it wasn’t noise to him – and now catches the higher toots of the new signal.
When Bob came 30 years ago, it was “a quiet family-style neighborhood. But it’s changing. Now there’s a hotel across the street. It makes a big change!”
Some of the problems he anticipated with the hotel did not happen, Bob says. “I know Dale Sola (whose family owns the hotel). … I was concerned about the size. I spoke out against it. But the next year, I told Dale I was wrong.”
Many current Point residents have generational ties here. Dave Poulin, former president of the Park Point Community Club, is a lifelong Point resident and Audubon Society member. He lives in the house his father bought in the 1930s, just a step away from the Community Club building housing the extensive archives of Park Point history. Dave knows his community – and his neighbors – well. It’s the kind of place where, “if a kid acts up, you go see the parents rather than call the police.”
When he talks about Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church – one of two here with 102-year-old St. Andrew’s by the Lake Episcopal Church – he can tell you “it used to be the original home of the Duluth Playhouse … moved here across the ice by the Catholic brothers in 1924 or so.”
Dave adds that inside the church is a plaque noting Margaret McGillis as the first child baptized there. Margaret – she goes by Mugs to her friends – still lives in the house where she was born, a building that was once the bandstand for White City, the long-gone Point amusement park.
Reminiscing in her kitchen, Mugs, now 88, remembers the old days on the Point with sharp wit and a lot of love. The walls of her house showcase photos of Park Point in years past.
“It was a great place to grow up. We were always special. The Oatka Boat Club was active when I was small. There’s a photo on the desk of my brother there. We could go over there and use the tennis courts and boats, canoes and things, as long as we were handy, helping out.
“Everybody knew everybody then, from one end of the Point to the other.” She has strong memories of the Point’s salty souls. “There was a bootlegger down here who ran the streetcar. He could stop and get bottles at his house, and then he stopped for his clients along the line. When they were late at the stop to meet him he’d ring the streetcar bell.
“We hardly ever went downtown, that was a rare treat. … For us, the beach was the best place to be, but in the winter, when you couldn’t afford the buses, one guy would stand in front and the rest hook on the back. … The drivers were pretty good to us. They knew we didn’t have any money. We could reuse the transfers; I had one used so often you couldn’t read it any more.”
Mugs and her father, a typesetter at the Duluth Herald, spent a lot of time on the water: they collected wood to burn in the winter, taking a skiff across the bay. “I’d go wade out in the bay and pile the wood in the boat, my dad would sit in the boat and row. … We’d saw it up and … make a party of throwing the wood down in the basement.”
Tom Mackay tells similar stories. His grandparents settled in a little cabin in 1918.
“Most of the houses were summer cabins that people expanded into year-round homes. … We were pretty much poor people, but we were really close-knit. There’s a fine line between people watching out for each other and people being nosy, but mostly it stayed on the good side.”
Park Pointers have a reputation as nay-sayers to change, but their city councilor, Sharla Gardner, disagrees. She appreciates the residents’ activism and willingness to take responsibility.
Kinnan Stauber has been involved with Park Point all her life. The granddaughter of Point residents, she resides lakeside with her husband, racing sailor Keith Stauber, and their children. Longtime head of the community club’s environmental committee, she’s mainly involved with preserving green space and restoring the unique beach grass and trees that hold the Point’s sand in place. “At the community level, there’s a sense of history and continuity,” she says. “So it’s our responsibility to keep it all going.”
Kinnan’s grandparents Addison and Mary Alspach, built and lived in the house down the Point that her parents, Ed and Elourine Alspach, now occupy. Her grandfather Addison, a music professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, and his wife loved the natural setting of the Point. “Even before they bought that house,” says Kinnan, “they used to rent the cabins in the pine forest.”
Not far from Bob Ouellette’s house near the bridge, everyone passes a Park Point icon – the readerboard at the S-curve on Minnesota Avenue. The board attests to the community’s cohesiveness and its quirkiness.
One side welcomes you while the other offers a daily sentiment, frequently with biting wit or sometimes a nod to a Park Point graduation, birthday or other notable event.
Dave Johnson, Point resident and community volunteer, got hooked into providing the aphorisms more than 10 years ago when his idea for “payback” backfired. “We had to put up a sign for an environmental meeting, and I got stuck doing it. It kind of frosted me, so I thought, well, if I have the letters, after this meeting I’ll put up whatever I want. I did and thought, great, then they’ll take the letters away from me. But what happened? They loved it! They love it when I give guff to Park Pointers, and they love it when I give the elbow to the tourists.”
The sign is a true center of the community: “There is a side of it I wasn’t expecting. … When a prominent Park Pointer dies, we often put up a tribute to them on the sign. It can pack an unexpected emotional wallop.”
It’s even sent a long-distance message of love. Dave recalls, “ Harold Ramey was a grand guy. He was a true community spirit; he took care of the building, the park grounds, tended our rinks. He was our Santa Claus at Christmas. When he finally retired, Harold and his wife, Sally, moved to Oregon to be with their kids. Within weeks of his move, Harold was diagnosed with cancer. We put up a ‘Get Well Harold, We Love You’ sign and gathered around it for a photo. I still can’t believe how many folks showed up for that. Sally told me he kept that photo taped by his bedside right to the last.
“Worst sign I ever put up was the one announcing his passing. I was a mush pile; I’ll never forget the way the letters were heavy in my hands and so blurry I could hardly see to arrange them.”
More recently, the unexpected loss of a younger resident resulted in something of a community miracle.
“It jarred our community when Dr. Nancy English died suddenly a few years ago. I put up a sign in tribute to her, and within hours people were leaving things at the base of the sign: a teddy bear, flowers and such. Someone put up a bright plastic sunflower. The next year, a real sunflower grew in the same spot. It was the toughest flower on the Point. It even had a duct-tape splint someone put on the stalk. The sunflower bloomed through the fall, and in the snow until the Nancy English Memorial 5K race was held in mid-November.”
A fitting tribute to both a long-time Park Point resident and to the resilience of all Park Pointers.
Ann Klefstad is a writer and an artist based in Duluth.
