A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
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It's peak community festival season right now, with three Carlton County communities throwing hometown celebrations over the next nine days. On Saturday, Brickyard Days will bring the small town of Wrenshall together for a parade and fun in the park and at Bricks Pub and Grub. Esko Fun Days runs Tuesday through Saturday next week, and Ma and Pa Kettle Days returns next weekend in Kettle River. While all three events include food and community gatherings, Kettle River is the only community to...
National Night Out is Tuesday, Aug. 6. Across the nation, neighborhoods and communities will host block parties, festivals, cookouts and various other community events with an emphasis on getting to know neighbors and local law enforcement. Every group has its own way of celebrating, large and small. In Cloquet, close to a thousand people will converge on Veterans Park for food and fun 5-8 p.m. Tuesday. At the same time, residents in the Sunnyside-Erickson Acres neighborhood will gather from...
Carlton social studies teacher Ryan Schmidt always dreamed of opening a hometown bookstore after retiring. Instead, he opened last week, just in time for Carlton Daze. The new N.P. Junction Books is located at 110 Third St., at the four-way stop, kittycorner from Third Base Bar. “It’s been an idea for six or seven years, then I started talking a little more seriously in about 2022,” Schmidt said. “Then I had the opportunity to do it a little sooner.” Schmidt did more than just open a bookstore...
FinnFest, starring Carlton County! Although that’s a slight exaggeration, I saw more people I knew at FinnFest Saturday morning than I usually see at the local grocery store. I hadn’t even made it to the ticket booth when I bumped into Anja Bottila, she of the mojakka cookoff and the Carlton County Historical Society. Next it was then Mandi (Huhta) Rosebrock, working the registration desk. Near the tori — Finnish for “marketplace” — I bumped into Mary Lukkarila, former Cloquet library director a...
A committee is working to bring pickleball to the tennis courts at South Terrace Elementary School. With the courts in disrepair for many years, Ed Kavanaugh estimated it will take close to $50,000 to renovate the space for four pickleball courts. Kavanaugh said they have a contractor willing to do the project, which will require digging up the existing asphalt, putting in new, then hiring someone to do the final surfacing. The courts could be striped for tennis and pickleball, like they are at...
Carlton teen Abrianna Schmidt will be the grand marshal of this year's Carlton Daze parade on July 28. Schmidt won the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's Journey of a Song contest earlier this year, with a song inspired by growing up in Carlton. Schmidt's song, "Small Town Girl," won her an all-expenses-paid trip to Nashville, and participation in the Hall of Fame's weeklong songwriting camp in June, working with music producers and other artists. The 18-year-old found out she was grand...
With plenty of water in the St. Louis River this year, the Fin Falls race returns to Paddlemania Saturday, said organizer Cliff Langley, calling it more of a sprint race. Kayakers will still paddle from just below the Thomson Dam to just above the rapids upstream of the swinging lift bridge at Jay Cooke State Park. From there, they will paddle the rapids upstream of the bridge - where spectators get excellent views of the action - then pass under the bridge about 100 years to where the river...
Sixth District Carlton County Judge Amy Lukasavitz commended 22-year-old Ricky Onefeather Tobolaski for taking responsibility for his actions — a rare occurrence in these types of cases, she said — and then sentenced him to four years and nine months in prison. Under the terms of a plea agreement, the Mahtowa man pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conductbafter originally being charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Tobolaski also pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of pornography. A first-degree criminal sex...
Standing under the Dunlap Island picnic shelter, celebrating the unveiling of the new riverfront cultural legacy signs along the St. Louis River in Cloquet, Jeff Savage shared the history of that particular area. Where Community Memorial Hospital stands today, there once was an Indian village. Even before that, the area around what is known today as Dunlap Island was a very important stopping place on the portage from Lake Superior to the Mississippi watershed, said the Fond du Lac museum...
The Cloquet Police Department hosted four training sessions over the past week to help prepare officers and other first responders for active shooter response. The intense, all-day training was hosted by the CPD, and included approximately 120 people from across the area, including Cloquet and Fond du Lac police departments, Carlton County Sheriff’s Office and dispatch, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota State Patrol, Cloquet Area Fire District, and several fire department m...
One of the county's smallest cities will again hold its unique celebration Friday through Sunday, for the 59th year in a row. Almost nothing goes right at Wrong Days in Wright, and that's by design. Softball players bat opposite their usual stance, running to third base first, then second, first and home. Instead of bingo, folks play ognib. They also play cribbage, but they play to lose, not win. They even dress for the occasion. "You wear your clothes inside out, unmatching sox. Most of our...
Esko school board members bought a house Monday. Or rather, they took the first step, unanimously approving a purchase agreement of $280,000 for the buildings and land at 25 Lincoln Lane. The lot is adjacent and just east of school property, behind the former RAM Insurance building, now the Esko Education Center. It is one of six houses on that block, and the closest one to the school. Superintendent Aaron Fischer recommended the purchase, after the homeowners reached out last week and gave the...
Thomson Township passed its 2023 audit with flying colors, with one major suggestion - the township should probably have less money in its reserve fund. Auditors from Abdo, an accounting and consulting firm based in Edina, Minnesota, told township supervisors the general recommendation is to keep a minimum of 35- to 50 percent of the operating budget in the general fund reserves, to cover any unexpected costs or payment delays. "You guys are well above that. You have almost 200 percent of your...
If all goes as planned, construction on a new dental clinic will start this fall or in the spring in the city’s Business Park, after Cloquet city councilors approved the sale of a 1.3-acre lot just off Highway 33, behind the business park sign. Dentist Wendy Peterson attended Tuesday’s meeting. Peterson plans to build a $2.3 million dental facility called Woods & Water Family Dental with space for up to seven operatories, starting with four. Peterson started her career as a dental hygienist in 2006, then went back to school, graduating fro...
Four "surprisingly young kids" caused thousands of dollars in vandalism at Cloquet High School on July 4, superintendent Michael Cary told school board members Monday. Cary said camera footage shows the children checking doors at the school until they found one that was not securely latched. Much of the incident was recorded on school security cameras, inside and out. Police have identified the suspects, who won't be named because they are juveniles. Technology director T.J. Smith told the...
Jana Peterson [email protected] A Moose Lake woman faces nine criminal charges after rear-ending an ATV at approximately 4 p.m. Saturday, July 6, while allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol. Dannaka Lennea Miller, 30, was arraigned in Sixth District Carlton County Court on Tuesday, July 9, on multiple charges of gross misdemeanor criminal vehicular operation, bodily harm, as well as gross misdemeanor DWI charges, and misdemeanor charges of driving after revocation, not carrying insurance and having an open bottle of an alcoholic...
Community Memorial Hospital is joining a healthcare network that should allow it to gain the strength of numbers while maintaining its independence. The Headwaters Network is a new coalition of 19 rural Minnesota hospitals and more than 50 clinics - including CMH and Raiter Clinic in Cloquet - that will provide care to more than 750,000 Minnesotans. "With a bunch of other rural facilities together, Headwaters has over three quarters of a million patients," CMH CEO Rick Breuer said. "Suddenly,...
In the years that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and subsequent calls for law enforcement reforms, choosing a career as a cop got more complicated and less popular. In 2019, 48 students graduated from the Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College law enforcement program. In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, there were 27. In 2022, only 15. Last year there were 24. There were 22 graduates at this year's Enhanced Skills Professional Peace Officers Education Program ceremo...
A couple who moved away without their pets, resulting in the death of five cats due to lack of food or water, were sentenced last month for their crimes, a combination of probation and fines. Karlee Lynn Strum, 32, and Dominic James Welch, 28, moved from Cloquet to Arkansas in December 2023, but left seven cats behind without access to food or water. Four cats were dead by the time someone entered the apartment 18 days later. A fifth cat died the same day it was rescued and two cats were nursed back to health. At the time, Strum and Welch were...
By the time most of you read this, July Fourth will have come and gone. Weather permitting, the parade, family fun, car show, races, basketball, movie in the park, and fireworks will have brought great joy to thousands once again, a national birthday party that's been celebrated in Cloquet for more than a century. "July fourth was the best summer day ever. It always will be," wrote Cloquet native and local poet Patrick Stevens of his 55-year-old memories of the holiday. Many of us share some...
It looked like Cale Prosen was going to end his 42-day kayaking trip around Lake Superior paddling in pouring rain through the Duluth Ship Canal. But the rain lifted and, just like that, part of a rainbow appeared on the horizon. "There are some gnarly currents," the 20-year-old told his dad, who was standing above him on the Aerial Lift Bridge, as the waves roiled between the concrete walls of the canal. Cale handled it easily. After all, he'd had six weeks of practicing navigating in his sea...
The Cloquet Community Band will be the grand marshal of the Cloquet Fourth of July parade next week. The volunteer band will still play in the parade, like they have every July Fourth parade held over the past 25 years — including two years ago, when the parade was canceled due to lightning. They had to head back to a garage in the West End of Cloquet anyway, so the band and the VFW float “made a parade of two” going down Cloquet Avenue, said music director Lynne Putzke. “The people who were sti...
Valerie Bronniche made an emotional plea to Cloquet school board members Monday to reconsider the district policy of moving elementary students between the two elementary schools, Washington and Churchill, when class sizes fluctuate. Her child just completed kindergarten at Churchill, and they were recently informed that he would be attending the first grade at Washington. “I just want to be the parent who says, ‘this doesn’t feel right,’” she told the board, before tearing up. “We’re gonna have lots of kids who feel unwelcome and scared an...
An 18-year-old Barnum woman faces charges after allegedly abusing a young person to whom she was a caregiver. Jasmine Melissa Collins was charged in Sixth District Carlton County Court last week with felony first-degree criminal sexual conduct with penetration, of a victim who is mentally or physically impaired or helpless. She was also charged with fifth-degree misdemeanor assault. According to the criminal complaint, the case has been under investigation since March, when the Carlton County Sheriff’s Office received a report of alleged h...
Brady Slater [email protected] A pair of major projects took over the Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College campus this spring and summer. One, the renovation of the commons area, is ongoing, while the other wrapped up earlier this month. As part of the Forest Stewardship Project, the college underwent a significant tree-thinning effort, dubbed a selective harvest. Built on the remnant timber plantation, the college’s tree thinning effort sought to improve fire safety and ...
