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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Kim Broman has dreamed of a National Geographic-type of adventure ever since becoming a second-grade teacher. This summer, she will fulfill that dream after being awarded a Grosvenor Teacher fellowship from the magazine and one of its travel partners. Soon, she will be sharing adventures from Iceland with her students at Washington Elementary in Cloquet. Broman will go on a 10-day Iceland expedition in August, starting in the capital of Reykjavik. She will then board the ship Explorer to...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College included a bit of history as the first bachelor of science degrees for elementary education were handed out in the Lester Jack Briggs Cultural Center May 9. There were 148 graduates who crossed the stage. Joradan Paulson, Nahin Gatica Cruz and Shana Aubid were the education graduates. There were 219 degrees earned in total....
On a bright, sunshiny spring afternoon, my wife and I were assigned to pick up our grandkids after school from Churchill Elementary in Cloquet. The school is within walking distance of home. I usually wait for my grandson, who is in first grade, outside of the door where he’s released. My wife goes to a second building to meet my granddaughter, who is 4 and in preschool. Max came running out of the school doors, saw me and gave me a big hug, then asked if he could go to the playground. With p...
A chilly wind raced across the strawberry fields Monday evening as the Lambert family and four young teenagers meticulously planted rows of strawberries. Together, they were a picture that could have been taken any time in the past 100 years. Slowly, the tractor rolled across the field: Amanda driving with two younger kids inside the cab, protected from the wind, and three or four older kids behind the tractor. Two teenagers sat with their backs to the tractor, taking turns feeding a planter...
A study released last month on Minnesota's "civil commitment" policies regarding people convicted of sex offenses says the state has failed in proving the worth of programs run in Moose Lake and St. Peter, under the umbrella of Minnesota Sex Offender Program, or MSOP. "Minnesota's uniquely aggressive civil commitment program threatens basic constitutional rights while exacerbating the very problem it is intended to solve," said Eric Janus, director of Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource...
The Thunder Film Fest welcomed a regional celebrity to its screening of the "Bad River" documentary Saturday afternoon at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. Mike Wiggins Jr., former chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, was the guest of honor and featured in the movie. "Bad River" tells the story of the Wisconsin- based Bad River Band and its ongoing fight for sovereignty - not only its recent legal battle over the 70-year-old Enbridge Line 5 pipeline and the threat...
The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) announced 19 workforce development grants totaling over $2.9 million to eight Minnesota educational institutions that are partnering with Minnesota businesses to develop and deliver customized workforce training programs. Grantees expect to train more than 4,000 workers through these programs. Fond du Lac Tribal & Community College received a $30,654 predevelopment grant for a partnership with Fond du Lac Band Cannabis Corp., a startup company opening a cannabis cultivation...
A community of Lake Country Power cooperative members gathered in Mountain Iron, Minnesota for the annual membership meeting Thursday, April 25. Director election results were announced in Districts 1, 5 and 9, to fill three-year terms. Locally, Larry Anderson of Esko was elected to serve District 9 with 448 votes to 351 votes for Kevin Maki of Saginaw....
Longtime Carlton County commissioner Dick Brenner announced Tuesday he will not seek another term on the county board. Brenner is serving his 32nd year on the board, dating back to 1992. Prior to that he served on the Cloquet school board. "I am not running," Brenner said during the board's monthly committee of the whole meeting. "I've been hounded about it. I am done at the end of December." "I'm happy for you," board chair Susan Zmyslony said. Brenner resides in Cloquet and serves District 1,...
The Cloquet family band #theindianheadband played the Homegrown Music Festival in Duluth last week. The band is known for its eclectic mix of tunes that defy categorization. The venue was the Sacred Heart Music Center Friday night. It's a former church in the Central Hillside neighborhood. The #theindianheadband lineup included Lyz Jaakola, Jackson Ripley, Xander Ripley-Jaakola, Jagger Ripley-Jaakola, Jeremy Gardner, Sheldon Misquadace, David Ripley and Suzanne Buan. They were among more than...
Four Cloquet City Council positions are up for election in November, including Wards 3, 4, 5 and the at-large council seat. Ward 3 would be for a two-year term, the others are four years each. Residents may file affidavits of candidacy May 21 through June 4 at Cloquet City Hall, 101 14th St. in Cloquet. Office hours are 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. The filing period is the same for Carlton Soil and Water Conservation District 1, 4 and 5 supervisors and Carlton County Board of Commissioner seats in Districts 1, 3 and 5....
Work to complete the Minnesota Highway 23 culvert replacement project at Perch Lake near Gary New Duluth will begin May 13. Contractors will begin mobilizing heavy equipment to the site on May 7. Motorists should expect a signal-controlled single-lane bypass. Work is expected to last about one month. A final phase of work to install a recreational bridge on the adjacent Marten Trail is expected to take place later in the summer. The culvert replacement is a part of a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Minnesota Land Trust habitat res...
Work to complete the Minnesota Highway 23 culvert replacement project at Perch Lake near Gary New Duluth will begin May 13. Contractors will begin mobilizing heavy equipment to the site on May 7. Motorists should expect a signal-controlled single-lane bypass. Work is expected to last about one month. A final phase of work to install a recreational bridge on the adjacent Marten Trail is expected to take place later in the summer. The culvert replacement is a part of a Minnesota Department of...
Brady Slater [email protected] Faced with growing enrollments and class rosters for the next school year, the Wrenshall school board did something Monday it hasn’t had to consider in years. It closed open enrollment in four elementary school grades. Superintendent Jeff Pesta recommended the action and, after much discussion, the board agreed. “It’s a good challenge to have,” Pesta said, “and one you haven’t wrestled with in quite a while.” He was confident that closing classes to outside enrollees would reinforce the image the school wan...
A 50-year-old Cloquet man faces eight felony counts of child pornography after being turned into police by a person residing in the same home. Richard Craig Carlson appeared in Sixth District Court remotely from jail on Wednesday, making a first appearance before Judge Amy Lukasavitz. Carlson’s attorney, Veronica Surges, asked for a speedy, uncontested omnibus hearing to be scheduled. Lukasavitz said the time before the next hearing at 10:45 a.m. May 22 would give Carlson an “opportunity to work with Ms. Surges … [to] come back and see where...
A wanted man led law enforcement officials on a chase through two counties last month, before being apprehended and allegedly found in possession of both methamphetamine and fentanyl. Robert William Pladson, 53, of Eagle Bend, Minnesota, was charged April 14 in Sixth District Carlton County Court with two counts of first-degree felony drug possession, for allegedly possessing 25 grams or more of fentanyl and 50 grams or more of methamphetamine. He was also charged with felony fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle. According to the...
A case alleging that a former Cloquet police officer exploited an elderly woman suffering from dementia is headed to court in November. The Minnesota Attorney General’s office charged Laci Marie Silgjord in July 2023 with financially exploiting a vulnerable adult — someone she befriended after responding to a call — and attempting to swindle the woman’s estate and her estranged husband after she died. Silgjord was dismissed from her job at the Cloquet police department in February 2022, after the Cloquet PD did its own internal investi...
A Carlton County man is in jail after allegedly holding, assaulting and threatening a woman — known to him — against her will for five days at his home northwest of Cloquet. Dennis Alan Oberg, 27, was charged April 29 with four felonies in Sixth District Carlton County Court, including kidnapping, felony domestic assault, threats of violence and false imprisonment. He remains in jail, with bail set at $7,500 with conditions or $75,000 without conditions. According to the criminal complaint, the woman told police that she willingly went to Obe...
First, the bad news. The delayed arrival of a 700-pound, almost $60,000 electrical switch will delay the opening of Carlton County's new Justice Center by a few months. Instead of a July opening, the new 117,000-square-foot facility along County Road 61 in Carlton is now expected to open in October. "It was involved in a fire on its transport," Carlton County Jail administrator Paul Coughlin said of the switch. "It's heavily damaged. They had to reject it and build a new one that takes 26 weeks...
A renovated hotel and casino, a new tribal justice center and a cannabis facility near the intersection of Minnesota Highway 210 and Interstate 35 are among the projects in development by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The cannabis facility follows the direction of three other tribes - the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, and Red Lake and White Earth nations - since marijuana was legalized in the state in August 2023. Caleb Dunlap, spokesman for the Fond du Lac Band, declined to...
Cloquet native Jessica Lange earned a Tony Award nomination Tuesday for her work in Broadway’s “Mother Play,” which opened April 25 in New York City. Lange, 75, is a 1967 graduate of Cloquet High School. She is among the most accomplished actresses in the world, having won two Oscars (“Tootsie” and “Blue Sky”), five Golden Globes, three Emmys, and one previous Tony for her role in 2016’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” In “Mother Play,” Lange plays “a hardheaded matriarch, attempting to guide the direction of her children’s lives as they mo...
The future of Highway 33 intersections at Carlton and Cloquet avenues will be the subject of a second public meeting at 6 p.m. May 9 at the Cloquet Middle School cafeteria (2001 Washington Ave.). “After gathering feedback on alternatives and analyzing traffic and safety data,” the Minnesota Department of Transportation said it will share the results of information gathered at its second public meeting. The first meeting, at the Cloquet Public Library in February, drew strong criticism about roundabouts proposed for those intersections, and pla...
Although University of Minnesota administrators say the transfer of the Cloquet Forestry Center is essentially a done deal, Carlton County legislators say they won't vote for bills proposed in the Minnesota House and Senate that would support the land transfer to the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. In response to questions posed by the Pine Knot News, Rep. Jeff Dotseth (R-Kettle River) and Sen. Jason Rarick (R-Pine City) both said they would "not support" any measures to move this...
When the Northern Lights Academy was created seven years ago by the 12 school districts served by the Northern Lights Special Education Cooperative, it gave those schools a place to send students they couldn't serve on their own. It also gave the students - who might have autism or significant emotional and behavioral disabilities and/or mental health needs - a place where they could be surrounded by classmates with similar needs and teachers specially trained to help them. Northern Lights...
A Cloquet man was sentenced April 12 for physically abusing a 2-year-old child in his care, pleading guilty to felony third-degree assault. In a plea deal with the Carlton County Attorney’s Office, Travis Dean Thrun, 22, was sentenced to four years, with a stay of adjudication, resulting in supervised probation. Thrun was arrested in November by Cloquet police. According to the criminal complaint, witnesses, including other caregivers, reported the child suffered through a series of three strangulation events, as well as a weeks-old anal cut t...
