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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The flag burning Sunday was not a protest. Instead - on the day before Veterans Day - members of Cloquet's BSA Scout Troop 171 were observing the United States Flag Code when they officially retired three worn and tattered American flags at Veterans Park in Cloquet. According to the flag code, a flag, "when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning." Scoutmaster Stafano Piazi said the Boy Scouts had a...
Wrenshall school board members voted unanimously Tuesday to write and deliver a letter to the Carlton school board posthaste, indicating Wrenshall's desire to continue with consolidation talks after news broke last month that the Carlton superintendent and board chair had initiated merger talks with Barnum. Short and to the point, the letter adopted by the board stated: Dear Carlton School Board. We are ready to meet to discuss consolidation between Wrenshall and Carlton when you are. Raptors...
The Cloquet Country Club has a goose problem - between 100 and 200 Canadian geese have developed a special fondness for the 18-hole golf course on the west side of Cloquet. During the Cloquet City Council meeting last Thursday, Nov. 7, CCC general manager Matt Carlson proposed a genuine northern Minnesota solution: holding a special goose hunt. The geese are not new, and the club has simply put up with droppings and damage for years, Carlson said. The turning point came after last year's mild...
The Cloquet School Board welcomed the return of incumbent Melissa Juntunen and two new board members - LeAnn Butler and Nichole Diver - who attended Monday's meeting. In total, Juntunen garnered 4,428 votes in the Nov. 5 election, Butler had 3,593 votes and Diver, who ran as a write-in candidate for the third open spot, received 417 votes. Included in that count were various versions of her name, including Diver, Nichole, Nichole Buckanaga and Nichole Diver. An additional 240 write-in votes...
There was a line of people outside Cloquet City Hall at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning, waiting for the polls to open. "There was a line again at 10 a.m. that kind of surprised us, and now there's another one," said head judge John Cavanaugh at about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. "We've been busy all day." By 4:30 p.m. they'd seen 675 voters come through, and Cavanaugh was expecting between 800-850 by the end of the day. The city hall was also busier than usual with people registering to vote, Cavanaugh said,...
Nathan Barta is just 20, but he won in a landslide Tuesday, taking more than 50 percent of the vote for Thomson Township Supervisor Seat C while his opponents – Jaryn Edblad and John Bergman – garnered 27 and 22.6 percent. While the incoming Thomson supervisor is definitely the youngest person in Carlton County – or maybe even the state – to win election Tuesday, the University of Minnesota Duluth junior knows a thing or two about local politics. Two years ago he penned a guest column in the Pin...
Be forewarned ... attending next week's Cloquet High School production of "Mamma Mia!" will have Abba songs running through your head day and night. Having Abba in your head is a happy way to start the day though, just like the CHS musical is a happy way to spend a couple hours Thursday through Sunday next week, with performances starting at 7 p.m. Nov. 14-16 and 2 p.m. Nov. 17 in the CHS auditorium. Director Corey Hunt said choir teacher (and music director) Rhonda Card pitched the musical last...
On a beautiful Saturday morning, hundreds of Minnesota's top high school cross country runners raced across the University of Minnesota Les Bolstad golf course as part of the Minnesota State High School Cross Country Meet. With the temperature in the 50s, it was the perfect day for running and spectators, said Carlton/Wrenshall coach Brenda Knudsen. But the rolling hills of the course created some challenges. "There were not a lot of PRs (personal records) with all those hills. It's not a fast f...
Milkweed is the only host plant of Monarch butterflies, meaning it's the only plant Monarch butterflies will lay eggs on and the only plant monarch caterpillars will eat. Milkweed also provides a food source for many other pollinators. Plant milkweed in your garden next spring. Photo by Jana Peterson / Pine Knot News...
The ripple effects of Flint, Michigan — where a change of water supply caused water pipes to corrode and leach lead into the drinking water — are still expanding almost 10 years later, thanks in large part to a federal campaign to ensure clean drinking water everywhere. Cloquet is not Flint, but changing laws and standards around drinking water led to a mailing from the city of Cloquet to 2,100 residents last week about water lines and the potential for lead. Noting that the letters caused some alarm and lots of questions, public works dir...
Students at Cloquet High School voted early this week when they participated in a mock election held in the school library Wednesday. The election was set up like a local polling station, with seniors acting as poll workers to register voters, explain ballots and supervise the process. CHS government teacher Chris Swanson brought his classes to the all-day election each period. He said students had the opportunity to vote during a social studies class period on Wednesday. "This mock election is...
A Kettle River city council member pleaded guilty earlier this month to violating government data practices rules but is already appealing her guilty plea, according to court documents. It’s a case that has unfolded in court hearings and various petitions over roughly a year, with a long background of personality conflicts and previous actions by people named in the case. Many are currently involved in the governance of Kettle River: with witnesses including a city staff member and the mayor, the defendant a current councilwoman up for r...
Oldenburg House owner Glenn Swanson made the rounds on Saturday, winding between tables, chatting with guests in the dinner break between live jazz performances. "If we were to name this as a nightclub, its name would be Club Sardine," said the gravelly voiced Swanson, noting that they'd packed 38 music-loving guests into the L-shaped dining room of the Carlton bed and breakfast for another Cookin' at the O event. It was the second weekend of performances for Danish jazz vocalist and composer...
Downtown Carlton was bustling Saturday with a wild and wonderful array of monsters, witches, chickens, rock stars, critters, cartoon characters, superheroes and more than one girl named Wednesday. Businesses, organizations and a Care Bears friend group lined the sidewalks along Chestnut Street handing out candy to what felt like more than a thousand kids and their parents, there to trick or treat in broad daylight. Five-year-old Rowan (pictured below) and his mother AnnaMay Frazier spun up one...
With all of Carlton County's precincts reported by 11:25 p.m. Tuesday, the 2024 local election brought some interesting results. The results won't be official until after they are canvassed, but changes are rare after reporting. Here are a few of the highlights: The mayor's race in Wrenshall is tied. Incumbent Gary Butala and challenger Jeff Bloom each have exactly 143 votes each. Two incumbent Carlton School Board members - Julianne Emerson and Eryn Szymczak - are out. Ryan Leonzal, an...
While some places in the country received bomb threats on Election Day, Carlton County was relatively incident free - with one major exception. "A suspicious envelope was left at a polling booth in Thomson Township," said Carlton County Sheriff's Office Lt. Doug Rotta, noting that the call came at 5:28 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 5, while voting was still underway. The discovery did not disrupt voting at Thomson Township, Rotta said. People just continued voting as usual. "It didn't turn out to be...
Quilts have been in the news this month. Above, quilters wave at passing vehicles as they walk across the Minnesota Highway 33 bridge over the St. Louis River Oct. 12 as part of a "quilt walk," to let people know about the art of quilting and what can be created. Despite a low turnout for the first walk, they got lots of honks and waves from people driving by, said Kris Keppers of the Wood City Quilters....
Freiberg family members tie ribbons on a banner to be carried at the front of the annual Suicide Awareness Memorial Walk, which happened in a light rain Oct. 12 in Carlton. Pictured from left are Tom, Jaxon, age 8, Jamie, and Jace, age 9, along with niece Jordyn Belden. Jamie said she survived a past attempt and participated in her first walk last year. "I put it on the calendar for this year and we came," she said. "I wanted to bring my kids. It's a good thing." People walk in memory of loved...
Work is ongoing at the Hotel Solem building downtown Cloquet as part of an extensive renovation that will remake the historic hotel — and former Mexico Lindo restaurant — into market rate apartments over the next 12-18 months. A crane was used earlier this month to replace roofing, while general demolition of the interior is continuing. Asbestos abatement is completed both inside and outside, according to developers C&C Holdings of Cloquet. Want more history on this project? Search for “Ho...
On a visit to the Cloquet Public Library Saturday, Oct. 19, Emma and Bruce Corrie stand with "The Circles of Belonging" canvas, an artwork which was colored or messages drawn by hundreds of people over the 12 days of Minnesota State Fair. "The richness of our human experience from all walks of life, of our diverse faith traditions, of our home towns or countries of origin, of our friendships and insights from life - all of them made this canvas a kaleidoscope with beautiful views of the human...
Armory Road will be smoother, safer and a little less steep at the end after a $1.8 million reconstruction project is mostly complete in 2026. For now, that project exists only on paper, but assistant city engineer John Anderson said construction is expected to start next spring during a public hearing at Tuesday's Cloquet City Council meeting. It's a well-used road, leading from Minnesota Highway 33 to the Cloquet Armory, McDonald's Restaurant and entrances to the Lumberjack Mall businesses...
Cloquet School Board members voted Monday against appointing a temporary replacement for Ken Scarbrough, who moved with his wife to North Dakota with less than three months left of his school board term. Superintendent Michael Cary said there was a former board member willing to serve the remainder of the term. He also explained there is a 30-day wait period for public comment, so even if the board had appointed a temporary member on Monday, they couldn’t be seated until Nov. 13, after the board’s first meeting that month. “So you would have...
When we started the Pine Knot News six years ago, people in the newspaper industry noticed. Admittedly, it was mostly shock — Who was crazy enough to start a brand-new paper? — mixed in with a flicker of hope. It all started after my previous employer, the Pine Journal, closed its office here and moved operations to Duluth. A group of us felt strongly that Cloquet and Carlton County needed a solidly local newspaper that actually cared enough to have an office here and a paper producing original...
Cloquet's Pine Valley Park was crawling with mountain bikers last weekend, as nearly 1,000 student athletes competed in the sixth Minnesota Cycling Association race event of the season. Add in their parents, coaches and fans, and the woodland recreation area was in constant motion, with fans hiking into the woods with cowbells or large speakers blaring music under a canopy of yellow, orange and red tents. The announcer's voice could be heard across the park and up to a mile away, as he...
After years of looking for a more economical way to distribute the school paper, Esko school board members approved a move to a digital-only newspaper starting in January. That means community members will no longer receive a paper copy of the Esko's Corner paper produced and distributed by Esko Community Education. The move is expected to save the school district thousands in printing and postage costs. Esko isn't the only local school making the move: Wrenshall switched to a digital paper effe...
