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 26 - 50 of 1412
Cloquet city officials and Consolidated Telephone Company (CTC) celebrated the CTC Woods to Waters Broadband Initiative and its arrival in rural Cloquet. The $4.9 million local grant will fund what are considered last-mile projects connecting some of the most rural and/or underserved residential areas of central and northeastern Minnesota. In Cloquet specifically, the project will improve service in the northern part of the city. Crews burying fiber optic cable have been visible along Minnesota...
What is normally a five-minute rubber-stamp meeting of Thomson Township residents turned into a near-revolt Tuesday, when citizens pushed back hard on actions by the township's elected officials. First up on the agenda for the reconvened annual meeting? An error in the township's proposed levy for 2025 after township officials failed to include payments to cover a $400,000 certificate of indebtedness to purchase equipment executed March 29, just over two weeks after the annual meeting when...
Work on the Interstate 35 Atkinson Bridge (pictured) continues, and so do detours on Carlton County Road 61, which passes under the bridge about 3 miles south of Highway 210. Traffic on County Road 61 is being detoured to County Road 4 to County Road 5. This traffic configuration was expected to last through late August. Costs for the project were estimated at $4.15 million and will improve the load carrying capacity of the bridge and life of the highway. Carlton County also announced the...
Folks thinking that all the Carlton County fair judges are local folks sharing their expertise are only partially right. A lot of judges - every livestock judge, in fact - come from outside the county, said Ora Mord. Mord drove nearly 200 miles from Clearwater County (west of Bemidji) to judge dairy goats for Carlton County 4-H last week. "You cannot judge in your own county," Mord said. "That's because you know the animals, you know the kids and you know the people. We want to make it as...
Led by servers and children throwing rose petals, members of the Queen of Peace Catholic Church walked down Cloquet Avenue during a processional Sunday to celebrate the feast day of the church's namesake, Jesus's mother, Mary, aka Queen of Peace. Mary intercedes for us and prays for peace, said Father Nick Nelson. The Queen of Peace priest explained that a processional is a couple things. "It's kind of like a mini pilgrimage. Our life is a pilgrimage, with the end goal of heaven," Nelson said. "...
Over 555 people attended Saturday's Mud Bog event during Ma & Pa Kettle Days, more than three times the population of the small Carlton County town. For those who aren’t familiar with mudding sports, there’s more than one type of mud bog, although they all involve vehicles driving into a giant mud pit. “This particular mud bog is more of a ‘bounty hole’ style. You’re not really supposed to make it through,” explained mud bog committee member Eric Senarighi. A mud bog is very different from a mud...
The annual Wood City Worship Festival brought music, food, faith and a ton of people to Veterans Park Saturday, plus a whole lot of fun. Even after the "foam party" was over, Maryah Christenson, 5, and Suri Keller, 6, had fun rolling through a foot of foam, ending their playtime covered in tiny soap bubbles. Meanwhile Josiah Gallegos, age 2 of Cloquet, kept up with the high-energy Go Fish band, jumping all over the grass in front of the stage through the band's various kid-friendly tunes. It...
Cloquet's Brandi Fisher and her passengers are the latest winners of an advertiser gift certificate for proudly displaying a Pine Knot News bumper sticker on their car. Fisher selected a gift certificate from CreativEdge in Carlton, which offers a range of gift items and apparel, as well as issues of the Pine Knot News each week....
Ted Swenson knew his farm had passed the 100-year mark, he just didn't know it happened in 2011. A trip to the Carlton County Courthouse led to that discovery last year. Now Swenson's Dairy will be honored as Carlton County's latest Century Farm in a program starting at noon Friday at the Carlton County Fair. To qualify as a Century Farm, a farm must have been continuously run by a family for a century or more, be at least 50 acres in size and currently involved in farming. Now owned by Ted...
A Carlton County man was sentenced to more than 25 years in prison Friday for sexually abusing three young girls in his care. Jamie Alden Godbout, 35, dated their mother for nearly a decade and was part of the family, so much so that the girls’ grandmother actually testified on his behalf, asking for a reduced sentence. But Sixth District Carlton County Judge Amy Lukasavitz echoed the words of the one victim who testified Friday. “You were the adult, you were the person who was supposed to protect them,” said Lukasavitz, who sentenced him t...
Get ready to rock, Cloquet. The Social Animals are coming home to celebrate a new single and new owners at The Jack. Look for an edgier sound to rattle the hometown bar. Local bars, after all, were the band's bread and butter a few years ago. Made up of vocalist Dedric Clark, guitarist Tony Petersen, bass guitarist Roger Whittet and drummer Boyd Smith, three of four originally hail from Carlton County. Clark and Petersen are from Cloquet, Smith from Esko and Whittet grew up in Lino Lakes. Now,...
The Lake Superior waterline to Cloquet "failed in spectacular fashion" earlier this month, but underwater pipe repairs are underway in the St. Louis River east of Duluth's Riverside neighborhood. "We had a geyser in the river there the morning it came to light," said Cloquet public works director Caleb Peterson Wednesday afternoon. "It's been shut down for about a week and a half." Peterson explained that the waterline pumps water from Lake Superior to Sappi. It is not used for potable drinking...
There was a spectacular show in the night sky Sunday and early Monday morning across Carlton County as the Northern Lights appeared along with the Perseids meteor shower. This is from St. Louis River Road north of Cloquet....
Anyone interested in running for local school board, township office or most municipal mayor and city council seats has until the end of the day Tuesday, Aug. 13, to file an affidavit of candidacy and pay the minimal filing fee at the respective city, town or school office. Nate Sandman says it’s the best $2 you’ll ever spend. The Cloquet school board chair is wrapping up his eighth year on the board. He doesn’t plan to run again, but said anyone who cares about kids and is passionate about education should consider running. There were zero...
The annual Brickyard Days parade in Wrenshall took its time making its way down the main drag from the convenience store to the firehall, starting with all kinds of firetrucks and ending with three women on horseback, who stopped frequently to say hello to friends or visit children who wanted a closer look. There was no shortage of candy, nor of children to gather it into bags, pockets and even an upside down umbrella. The crowd migrated to the firehall for ice cream following the parade, which...
Thanks to the end of an almost two-year drought, water levels were high enough this year for Paddlemania to again feature the Fin Falls race course, which spans some of the best rapids on the lower St. Louis River through Jay Cooke State Park. “This race highlights some of the more gnarly rapids you have to navigate, including some Class 4 rapids,” race director Cliff Langley told the Pine Knot last week, explaining the water had been too low the past two years for that race course. Spe...
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...
