Pine Knot News - A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news

Barring an emergency, there will be no New Year's baby at Cloquet's Community Memorial Hospital this year. The three delivery suites - with private baths and whirlpools, forest views and aromatherapy...

A giant warehouse that will one day support the medical supply needs for more than 100 Essentia Health facilities has transformed the Esko Industrial Park over the past several months. Hidden from... Full story

A Carlton County man who was sentenced last month for shooting his ailing wife died by suicide two days later in a Minnesota prison. Judge Amy Lukasavitz had sentenced 67-year-old Raymond Arthur... Full story

Cloquet police have lifted the shelter-in-place order issued in response to a shooting at the Super 8 hotel in Cloquet. Law enforcement officials confirmed three people died, including one person they... Full story

After responding to a shooting, then issuing and later lifting an order to shelter-in-place, the Cloquet Police Department confirmed that a man killed two people at the Super 8 in Cloquet before... Full story

Three people from three different cities were killed Monday in a suspected double murder/suicide at the Super 8 hotel in Cloquet that forced the evacuation of the hotel and a community lockdown as aut... Full story

As a teenager growing up in West Duluth in the 1970s, music really mattered to James Wiita, even more than school sometimes. He's been revisiting those times in recent years, as he researched and... Full story

Pine Knot subscriber Billy Anderson shared his own piece of Christmas history: an original "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" book. Handed down to him by his grandmother, Claudia Johnson, the book was... Full story

Given the choice between watching his wife continue to suffer or ending her life, Raymond Julian told the courtroom that he chose to honor her request to die. He would do it again, given the same... Full story

The third weekend of December saw green grass and puddles at Pine Valley, where pine trees loom above a network of trails. There was no sign of the usual ski jumping and Nordic skiing that keep the... Full story

It began with a group of parents in the early 1960s looking for something - places to go, things to do - for their grown children, all of them adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities.... Full story

Now that the new Esko school fitness center is nearing completion, school district officials are focusing on another big question: What to do with the 3,800 square feet occupied by the current...

Changing school culture - and incorporating more of the local Ojibwe culture - has paid off for Cloquet's Washington Elementary School, in test scores, recognition and especially the well-being of...

Soon the rest of Minnesota can find out what Cloquet residents already know: Pine Valley is special. City officials learned last week that Cloquet's Pine Valley Recreation Area - home to ski jumps... Full story

Cloquet city councilors and mayor Roger Maki approved a smaller budget Tuesday than they expected three months ago. That means the levy increase for property taxes will also be smaller than reflected...

The shirts said it all: Vetsgiving. Once again, the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 18 of Carlton County organized a massive Thanksgiving campaign here: cooking, serving and delivering a record... Full story

Firefighters in the area were busy the past week with a spate of fires surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday. The most serious incident was a garage fire on Wednesday, Nov. 22, at a home in Brevator...

Expect lots of shoppers in downtown Cloquet Saturday, as a growing number of businesses are actively participating in Small Business Saturday. In part, that's because the number of businesses across... Full story

The group of 16 Wrenshall students quickly separated into small groups outside the Carlton VFW last week, as they hammered and cut the final pieces of the walk-in cooler they'd been building since...

The first Lumberjacks diver to go to State since 2005, Esko junior Rilee Durovec took 20th place at the Minnesota State High School League Class A Swimming and Diving meet last week....

With 1,284 students this year, Esko schools may be at its highest K-12 enrollment ever, superintendent Aaron Fischer told school board members Monday. "That's a lot of students, more than we...