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 1 - 25 of 35
Cloquet rebounded from a fairly disastrous July Fourth by making the most of July Fifth: holding a last-minute stand-still parade Tuesday evening before the movie and fireworks to make up for the canceled parade on Monday. Cloquet Fourth festival co-coordinator Ivan Hohnstadt said the idea for the stand-still parade came to him late, after a cold and wet July Fourth that saw the parade canceled and the movie and fireworks postponed to Tuesday. He emailed committee members at 1 a.m. and called...
Esko Schools Quarter 4 Honor Roll Bella Abrahamson Emma Adkins Kaitlyn Adkins Ashley Aker Claire Anderson Keone Anderson Siri Anderson Rachel Antonutti Lucye Backstrom Ellahna Barnes Ellynor Barta Joel Barta Alena Beare Mollie Belich Hunter Berg Aspen Berg Cadence Berger Cuinn Berger Leah Borden Emma Breed Ahna Brekke Braeden Caple Priya Carey Amber Carlblom Joseph Cekalla Emma Cekalla Samuel Cheslak Ayden Chopskie Megan Chopskie Ty Christensen Liberty Clifford Avah Clow James Cornell Paul Cornell Michael Cornell Rylee Demers Gabriel Dusek...
The County Seat Theater is full of life this summer as nearly 150 young actors put on their best act. The summer youth theater camp program is nearing the end of its four-week session on musical theater. Each week of theater camp ends with a show, "Off Their Rockers," which takes place in a senior center where all is quiet and calm until the center director decides to use music and dance to bring fun and excitement into the lives of the seniors. Each week, 30 new students dance and sing to the...
Police shut down Pinehurst Park Saturday night after shots were fired, resulting in the arrest of a 16-year-old boy from Superior. According to the Cloquet Police Department, at 11:15 p.m. Saturday, July 2, a Cloquet police officer was stopped by two young men and a woman and her teenage child in a car on Cloquet Avenue, who reported that someone had shot at them in Pinehurst Park. The car had damage consistent with gunfire. They told the officer that minutes before, the two young men - ages 16...
Recent Cloquet high school grads Grant Nordin and Caleb Hansen are already on track to go to college for free and land jobs in the maintenance department at the Cloquet Sappi mill once they complete their coursework. The jobs would likely pay between $32 and $35 an hour to start - not bad, for a two-year degree. Hansen and Nordin are the first two Cloquet students to take advantage of Sappi's new Minnesota Dual Training grant for advanced manufacturing from the state's Office of Higher...
Fifteen future peace officers finished skills training on Friday morning, then celebrated graduation that afternoon at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. The class of 2022 was the 22nd group of students to participate in the Law Enforcement Skills Training program at FDLTCC. During the ceremony, graduates Alexis Houle of Duluth, Katie LaTourelle of Saginaw, and Duluth's Key Powless provided commentary on their experience in the program. Former graduate Ian Johnson, of the Duluth Police...
The talk is preliminary at best, but there is a movement afoot to explore replacing the grass at Bromberg Field in Cloquet with artificial turf. At the Cloquet school board meeting last month, superintendent Michael Cary provided an update on possible future plans for the facility that hosts an aging track and football field. There wasn't much to report, except that the community group that formed several months ago and the board subcommittee were going to meet, after Cary met with the group in...
There are still people living on the second and third floors of the Victory Apartments building, a month after the city of Cloquet warned those residents that without a proper backstairs, an escape in case of fire or other calamity, the apartments are deemed uninhabitable. After an inspection on July 1, the city posted more reminders on apartment doors this week, causing a stir among tenants who construed them as forcible evictions. That isn't the case, said Holly Hansen, the community...
With July Fourth in the rearview mirror, summer festivals are now coming fast and furious. Moose Lake and Wright will celebrate their signature events next weekend, with Agate Days running July 16-17 and Wrong Days in Wright starting one day earlier, with events planned for July 15-17. Perhaps the most exciting news out of Moose Lake is the return of the Clark-Olsen Agate Stampede at 3 p.m. Saturday following a pandemic pause the last two years. For the uninitiated: people line up on both sides...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College was set to kick off its Hot Summer Nights concerts Thursday with a show by the acoustic duo PK Mayo and John Wright. The concert series is free, and shows are 7-9 p.m. the first three Thursdays in July in the FDLTCC amphitheater. Next up, enjoy groove trio New Salty Dog on July 14, followed by Rock-a-Billy Revue, a band with a history of bringing fun to every show, on July 21. Each exciting evening will feature music great for the entire family. All...
Often, we learn a lot about our own country, state, city and workplaces by sharing experiences with counterparts around the world. In late June, I flew to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to participate in a weeklong exchange with cultural economists from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries. We last met in Valdivia, Chile, two years ago. The participants in the exchange included professors, researchers and students from many countries, including Portugal, Spain, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and...
The Cloquet library hosted a Pollinator Garden Camp last week for children. It was led by Alyssa Bloss from the Carlton Soil & Water Conservation District. Cloquet city crews helped with preparation of the planting site. The plants used will benefits bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects....
What could have been deemed perfectly wet and cool running conditions for Monday's Sawdust 5K turned out to be enough of a nuisance to stop a number of runners from signing up the day of the race. "Our pre-registration numbers were right around where they normally are," said Sam Jacobson, who, alongside his wife, Julie, is a race director. "With the forecast for rain and bad weather on race day, our normal race day registration numbers were down. We didn't have the number of walkers we would...
The Minnesota North U16 girls volleyball team, which includes four local players, recently completed an incredible run to a fifth-place finish at the National AAU U16 volleyball tournament in Orlando. The Minnesota North Navy squad consists of 11 players from around the state, including three from Cloquet and one from Esko. "Mainly, our players are from around the Duluth area," said head coach Bianca Dufour. "We played in 14 tournaments over the course of a nine-month season, so the girls...
The Minnesota Wilderness junior hockey team held its main training camp last week. Roughly 135 players were expected to attend the three-day event, which concluded Thursday with an all-star game at Northwoods Credit Union Arena in Cloquet. According to a Wilderness news release, coaches said they would use the all-star game to determine who will be invited to the season-opening training camp later this summer. All NAHL teams must have rosters reduced to 25 players by Sept. 1. The team is...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College will soon have an outdoor classroom on campus by this fall. The new space will be known as the Megwayaak ("in the woods") classroom and will be located between the campus amphitheater and the Chiringa art piece. The classroom, constructed by TKDA with general contractor Max Gray Construction, will feature a demonstration kitchen and space for classes and other activities. "We are so excited about Megwayaak," said Courtney Kowalczak, director of the...
Wrenshall school board members voted unanimously Thursday, June 30, to authorize an outside investigation into allegations of misconduct. The special board meeting was brief and very formal, but public, with motions made after advice from John Edison, the district’s attorney from the Minneapolis firm Rupp, Anderson, Squires & Waldspurger. Last week’s special meeting was held specifically to authorize the investigation, after a motion to hire investigator Justin Terch was tabled at the June 13 board meeting so board members could further inv...
The CN Railroad will be conducting maintenance work at the railroad crossing on Midway Road at St. Louis River Road, approximately 1.3 miles south of U.S. Highway 2. As a result, both Midway Road and St. Louis River Road will be closed temporarily at this crossing from July 11 through July 15. The east leg of St. Louis River Road has closed in preparation for the project. The CN Railroad is using this space for storage of materials and equipment. St. Louis County Public Works will post detour signs directing traffic on Midway Road to use Stark...
Lake Country Power announced its latest round of Operation Round Up grants. The cooperative’s Trust Board reviewed and considered 44 grant applications and distributed funds to 42 projects and programs this past quarter. Local recipients include: • Queen of Peace Quilters, funds for adult and baby quilts • Moose Lake Township, funds for pickleball courts • Cloquet Fourth of July Celebration, funds for free family celebrations • Washington Elementary School P.I.E., funds for eighth annual Light Up The Night run/walk • Carlton County Retired Edu...
A Holyoke man was found guilty last month of sexually assaulting his 9-year-old daughter in a case that began 11 months ago. Following a trial June 21-23, a jury found Calvin Bartz, 35, guilty of multiple acts of second-degree criminal conduct in Sixth District Carlton County Court on June 23. The charges stemmed from a report made in August 2021 to the Two Harbors police department. According to the criminal complaint, Lake View Memorial Hospital called the police to report the sexual assault of a juvenile girl. The girl’s mother told police t...
Placement of campaign and other advertising signage on any highway rights of way is not allowed under state law, reminds the Minnesota Department of Transportation. All state, county, city and township roads and highways fall under the same state law. Highway rights of way include driving lanes, inside and outside shoulders, ditches and sight corners at intersections. Also, landowner consent is needed before signs are placed on private property outside of the right of way. MnDOT crews are required to remove unlawfully placed signs and impound...
Northbound Interstate 35 traffic near Barnum was switched over to the southbound lanes this week. Traffic will be traveling in a head-to-head configuration in the area for approximately 70 days. The closure of northbound lanes will also close Exit 220/Carlton County Road 6 and a detour will be posted. The northbound lanes will be resurfaced with a replacement of the existing concrete unbonded overlay. The project is expected to be complete in early October. Motorists should expect delays during peak travel times....
It was by no means your typical Fourth of July in Cloquet this year. And, really, why should it have been, after all we’ve gone through in the past three years? We went from no events in 2020 due to the threat of the pandemic to a limited event in 2021. This year, the weather was the menace, but it created a rarity: two days of events. This was the first year of Fourth organizing by us here at the Pine Knot News, under contract with the city. Call us biased, and certainly exhausted, but we are proud of how things went despite a wet chilly Monda...
I went to Wrenshall schools and have lived in the district longer than most of the people who seem to have the need to bash the board. My history with the district does not, however, give my opinion more truth. Just because you went to Wrenshall School or worked for the school does not make your words more truthful. I believe the educational system is under attack by groups that want to project their thinking on developing minds. One purpose of a school board, in my opinion, is to prevent possible outside groups from inserting themselves into...
Although the July Fourth celebrations have passed, many of us put out the American flag every day, weather permitting. The earliest version of the flag flew in 1776, but it wasn’t until 1777 that the Continental Congress passed the Flag Act, which unified the U.S. under a banner of 13 alternating red and white stripes: one for each of the 13 colonies and 13 stars to represent each state. There is also a color code for the flag. Each color represents an American ideal — red for valor, white for...
