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
Sorted by date Results 1269 - 1293 of 4091
Due to a plumbing issue, Cloquet's Washington Elementary School will have an e-learning Day Thursday, March 16, while crews make repairs. All other buildings were planned to be open as of 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, when superintendent Michael Cary notified the newspaper of the change....
New face minds Cloquet lakes, trails `The timing wasn't great, two weeks before the birth of his second son, but the opportunity for Tony Elwell and his family was too good to pass up. "Otherwise, chances of getting back here were slim," said Elwell, the new face of the Department of Natural Resources in Cloquet. "We'd have to wait years, and we've always wanted to come back to this area. So, I put in for it." Elwell's request was granted, and he started as the conservation officer for the...
Following two weeks of uproar related to proposed ordinance changes in Wrenshall, the city council earned a muted response at its meeting Wednesday. There were fewer than a dozen visitors to City Hall, compared to the almost 100 who objected to an RV park ordinance at a public hearing in February. The city council said Wednesday it won’t address the RV ordinance again until a planning commission meeting at 10 a.m. April 19 — the first date the council can meet in full due to an absence from councilor Joyce Gvesrude. The council, which also act...
A one-time Cloquet resident was sentenced Tuesday to 38 years in prison — the maximum sentence — for the murder of Minneapolis North student and athlete, Deshaun Hill Jr. in Minneapolis. Cody Logan Fohrenkam, 30, was found guilty of second-degree homicide by a Hennepin County jury on Jan. 26. The shooting occurred after the two happened to pass each other on the sidewalk — Hill wearing a walking boot on one foot, Fohrenkam searching for the person who punched him four times and stole his phone at a store that morning. He shot Hill three times...
In the black and white world of auditing, the letter the Minnesota State Auditor sent to the city of Kettle River last month is clear. "We found several instances where the city violated Minnesota state law," state auditor Julie Blaha told the Pine Knot News this week. For city officials of the small town, population 172, things are apparently a bit more gray. Mayor David Lucas described the 10-page letter outlining administrative violations in three areas as "nothing." Those items include...
The slate of candidates is set for Lake Country Power’s director elections this spring. Director ballots for Districts 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8 will be mailed to co-op members between March 31 and April 5. Northern Carlton County areas fall in districts 7, 8, and 9. Members running as candidates for the LCP board in the area are: District 7: Craig Olson, Culver. District 8: Marvin Ketola, McGregor; Brian Napstad, McGregor; Daniel Reed, Kettle River; Danny Smith, Tamarack; and Paul Vernon, Tamarack....
A quick and aggressive response by firefighters saved the storefronts at the Bergquist complex last week, but the large warehouses in the back are likely a complete loss. Cloquet Area Fire District Chief Jesse Buhs said the stores were connected to the warehouses by two breezeways. Both Bergquist Imports and Erbert & Gerbert's sandwich shop sustained smoke damage, but the fire didn't spread to the front. Erbert & Gerbert's owner Al Kurtz used Facebook to thank fire suppression efforts, saying...
Icy roads did not deter a dozen concerned Kettle River citizens from attending Monday's Carlton County Board meeting to ask why the grader was pulled from the Kettle River area county garage. "Six months ago the Kettle River people were assured the county garage would stay open," Bob Hattenberger said to county commissioners. "No one from the county let us know the garage was empty. Our first inkling the man and machine were gone was when we saw no tracks in the snow in front of the garage. We...
For the second time in less than a year, Esko schools were again the victim of a “swatting” incident, essentially a fake 911 call made to bring about the dispatch of a large number of law enforcement officials to a particular address. According to a news release from the Carlton County Sheriff’s Office, a 911 call came in at 10:39 a.m. Thursday, March 2, indicating there were injuries due to violence at Esko High School. Sheriff’s office staff made contact with the school and both entitie...
Cloquet resident and WKLK sports guy Dwight Cadwell has a new lease on life, and a new liver. He and his wife, Diane, got the call that a donated liver was available just before midnight on Feb. 18. The doctor told them they needed to get to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester within 5 to 5 ½ hours. Diane made it there by a little after 4 a.m. She may have exceeded the speed limit, despite her hatred of nighttime driving. "When you know you have to get there for a liver, you get there fast,"...
Editor's note: Cloquet School District officials canceled the special meeting mentioned in this story and will finalize athletic facilities plans and funding at the board meeting on Monday, March 20 instead. Cloquet superintendent Michael Cary told school board members he’s been working “fast and furiously” with contractor Kraus-Anderson and Members Cooperative Credit Union officials on plans for the $4.5 million outdoor athletic facilities project, but not fast enough to bring it to the board...
Persia Erdrich's son had just turned 2 years old when he spoke his first sentence in Ojibwe. The pair were visiting the Minnesota Zoo as part of a group of babies, toddlers, parents and elders in a program to teach Ojibwe to young children and their parents. Erdrich, whose Ojibwe name is Netaa-niimid, said it happened when her son Patrick Linehan, whose Ojibwe name is Ogimaagaabaw, pointed at a bear in an enclosure. "Mokwa nibaa," he said. The bear is sleeping. This was possible for Erdrich's... 
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No one was hurt Saturday when the pilot of an experimental light sport aircraft made an emergency landing on the ice-covered Big Lake Saturday afternoon. The Carlton County Sheriff's Office described the aircraft as a "home-built fixed-wing aircraft" in a news release, explaining that the landing was planned after pilot Rich Mattson realized one of the landing gear wheels had broken off when he departed from Fish Lake in Fredenberg Township in St. Louis County. After originally planning to land...
Nearly 100 people appeared Tuesday at a public hearing in Wrenshall related to proposed RV park regulations. About 15 percent of attendees spoke at the hearing, doing so resoundingly and to repeated applause. Their message to the city's planning commission, which is also its town council: leave business owner Jeff Bloom alone. "For you to pick this man out and single him out and try to create ordinances to cause him to spend more money that could possibly cause him to go out of business is compl...
A fire at the site of Bergquist Imports along the Minnesota Highway 33 frontage road in Cloquet drew a large response Wednesday afternoon as smoke poured from the back of the complex of buildings. Steady smoke curled from the back, carrying across the four lanes of Highway 33 and blowing south. Firefighters with axes and steel wrecking bars were entering at the back of the complex, disappearing into thick smoke. "I'm a little shocked," said Barry Bergquist, who owns three buildings on the site,...
Science fair offers time to shine, after months of hard work The rewards of scientific pursuit are many. There's the satisfaction of learning and contributing to a greater body of knowledge, the excitement of experiments, recognition for a job well done. And, in the case of the Northeastern Minnesota Regional Science Fair, sometimes there's swag, travel or cold hard cash. Students from five schools came together Saturday at the University of Minnesota Duluth to tell a small army of judges about...
Firefighters arrived to find a pole barn engulfed in flames just after 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21. According to a news release, Carlton County Sheriff’s Office deputies learned from the property owner that a tractor and recreational vehicle were also inside the pole building, along with hay for animals. No injuries were reported from the fire, and the homeowner removed the animals and none were injured. The barn was located on the 4100 block of Kari Road in rural Carlton County between Sawyer and Cromwell. Volunteer fire departments from C...
After tentatively scheduling a date for a follow-up public hearing on the proposed private road and private shared driveway ordinances at their first February meeting, the Thomson Township board of supervisors decided to take the date off the calendar and select a later date. On Feb. 2, township attorney David Pritchett urged the board to select a date to push the project along due to the large public engagement. At the time, the board selected March 9 for the follow-up hearing. However, at the township board meeting Thursday, Feb. 16, the...
Iris Keller, the newly appointed Ward 3 Cloquet city councilor, peppered city officials with questions Tuesday as she played catchup on the complicated issue of project labor agreements in the city of Cloquet. "You've been busy with the ins and outs of this for six years," Keller said to the other councilors. Largely informational and fairly short, there was no vote at the meeting Tuesday. Instead, there was a first reading of a proposal to eliminate the requirement for private businesses to...
Now seven weeks into the Minnesota legislative session, here are some highlights taken from weekly email updates provided by District 11A State Rep. Jeff Dotseth, R-Silver Township. Local issues Dotseth was chief author on bills advocating for legislation to appropriate funding to improve Highway 73 south of Cromwell, as well as a Cloquet Area Fire District request for $10 million in state funding toward a new ambulance and fire district facility. He also signed onto a bill to help farmers...
Carlton school board members are facing the double whammy of both student numbers and state dollars dropping even more quickly than anticipated. At Tuesday’s Carlton school board meeting, district business manager Norm Nelis warned of a revised budget that increased the estimated deficit due mostly to declining enrollment. “We had budgeted for a reduction of 25 kids … the deficit for the revised budget we're putting out is more than what we have in the adopted [budget] primarily because the number of kids were down,” Nelis said. In fact, C...
A Barnum man faces charges of allegedly raping a young girl who had previously looked up to him as a father figure. Chad Arnold Connor, 47, was arraigned in Sixth District Court-Carlton County on Feb. 9 on two charges of felony first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a person under 13. According to the criminal complaint, Connor is 33 years older than his alleged victim. Now a teenager, the girl told her mother and police in December that Connor had raped her starting when she was about 6 years old and would spend time at his trailer house...
A 48-year-old Cloquet man will appear in District Court in Carlton on March 8, facing a felony assault charge after allegedly striking and harming his girlfriend with a shovel in January. Daniel Ray Lundquist was arguing with his 45-year-old girlfriend outside 31 18th St. on Jan. 19, when the alleged assault took place. Lundquist was observed by a witness, who told police she saw him “really try to hurt” the woman. The witness described Lundquist in the criminal complaint as having two hands on the shovel and jabbing twice at the woman, str...
A Minnesota boy makes a new friend in an online game. He thinks it’s a cute girl around his age. After chatting for a while, she sends him a nude photo of herself and asks for one in return. He sends a photo and suddenly his new friend stops being friendly. She is actually an overseas criminal who demands money or says that the photo will be shared with his parents and friends on social media. Panicked and ashamed, the boy has no idea what to do next. This and similar scenarios play out every day in homes around Minnesota. Financial s...
We make plans – Mother Nature laughs! Because of this week’s winter weather, the press that prints the Pine Knot News was shut down Thursday, for the first time ever, after Cambridge got over 16 inches of snow. That means this week’s Pine Knot News will be delivered to subscribers a day later than usual. If you just can't wait, we have delivered newspapers to the newsstands Friday. Meanwhile, hunker down, grab a cup of coffee and check out the website to catch up on the latest local news....
