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 268
If all goes as planned, construction on a new dental clinic will start this fall or in the spring in the city’s Business Park, after Cloquet city councilors approved the sale of a 1.3-acre lot just off Highway 33, behind the business park sign. Dentist Wendy Peterson attended Tuesday’s meeting. Peterson plans to build a $2.3 million dental facility called Woods & Water Family Dental with space for up to seven operatories, starting with four. Peterson started her career as a dental hygienist in 2006, then went back to school, graduating fro...
Storm chasing is a dangerous and unpredictable hobby, but it can also be incredibly rewarding. For me, there’s nothing quite like the thrill of chasing a storm cell and trying to capture the perfect shot. I had the opportunity to do just that when a severe thunderstorm warning was issued June 12 for our area. I grabbed my camera and headed out into the field, hoping to get a glimpse of a tornado or just amazing cloud formations. As I drove, I watched the storm clouds build in the distance. T...
Pine Knot News staff report Whether you’re looking for a way to while away an afternoon or plan an entire week’s worth of activities — staycation style — there’s plenty to do in Carlton County. Now that summer has taken hold, it’s the perfect time to explore everything the area has to offer, from hiking in Jay Cooke State Park and whitewater rafting down the St. Louis River, swimming at The Beach or perfect rainy day attractions like our local museums. Established in 1857 and home to more than 3...
Chad Richard Timonen, 43, of Apple Valley, Minnesota, passed away at Fairview Ridges Hospital on March 28, 2024, with his family by his side. Chad was born June 14, 1980, at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and was raised in Beaver Township. He graduated from Moose Lake High School in 1998. Chad worked in various industries, including farming, the railroad, truck driving, logging, over-the-road heavy haul, driving tow trucks and, most recently, for Castle Rock Contracting &...
City planner and zoning administrator Al Cottingham received a round of applause during Tuesday's Cloquet City Council meeting - a meeting he hopes will be his last. Cottingham is retiring June 6, after 12 years with the city of Cloquet. "I will very very much miss seeing you here every day and keeping the rest of us on point," said city administrator Tim Peterson. Cottingham said he will miss the people, the job not so much. "It's time to retire and go do some things that I've been putting on...
Congratulations to Tom Gervais on being recognized for excellence in leadership at the Cromwell-Wright Fire District’s annual get-together April 26. Tom’s leadership style is a steadfast commitment to serving others with integrity, and he is an inspiration and example of true leadership excellence. It was so great to see the wonderful photographs and paintings at the Pine Knot office in Cloquet last Friday evening. The exhibit will be up for several weeks, so stop in to take a gander at the...
Polka celebrity, farmer and retired Minnesota state senator Florian Chmielewski died Tuesday at his home in Sturgeon Lake at the age of 97. He should be buried with his accordion, which he played for nearly 80 years and famously played on the steps of the Minnesota Capitol building in his first Minnesota Senate term in 1971. "Freshman senator stages 'polka protest' at Capitol," a newspaper headline shouted, the story detailing how Chmielewski had broken out his accordion and performed a special...
I worked for the City of Cloquet for 40 years and came to know Pine Valley well. It has long been a Cloquet gem overlooked by many. The first time I walked into the chalet, my immediate thought was what a great place this would be with an updated chalet that had a Master Fireplace! Thank you to the Medich Family for having this same vision. It will forever be a lasting legacy for not only Joe Nowak, Mike Marciniak and Hank Nelson, who gave their everything to Pine Valley, but also to George and Helen. Thank you! Jim Prusak, Pike...
Pine Valley Recreation Area received an unexpected boost this week - and it wasn't from the late-season snowstorm. During the Cloquet city council meeting Tuesday, longtime city parks commissioner Tom Urbanski shared news of a $1 million commitment for construction of a new multipurpose chalet at the popular Cloquet park. The donation comes from a family with deep ties to Cloquet and neighboring communities. "I am happy to inform you of my intent to donate funds for the planning and...
Members of the Kavanaugh village gathered at the Streetcar last week to watch Carlton's own Jeopardy champion, Sam Kavanaugh, in another tournament. The hometown hero didn't disappoint, keeping fans guessing to the very end of the high-stakes trivia show. It wasn't that Sam answered the final question correctly: no one did. Rather, he wagered less than Monica Thieu did, who was beating him by $3,800. The end result saw her score drop to $7,599 while Kavanaugh's dropped to $7,600. A dollar's diff...
Cloquet's Aidan Ripp is a 2024 national champion four times over, winning every Nordic ski race he competed in last week during the U.S. Collegiate Skiing Nationals championships. Held March 5-9 at Mount Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, New York, more than 150 Nordic skiers from colleges around the country competed in four events across five days. From the opening race, Ripp set a pace that was unmatched by anyone in the USCSA, winning the opening 7.5-kilometer skate race by over 44 seconds, and...
Three Cloquet skiers took Leap Day to a whole new level, hurling themselves off a 64-meter ski jump in Anchorage, Alaska Thursday, Feb. 29 as part of the 2024 ski jumping and Nordic combined Junior Nationals championships. Joel Linden and brothers Isaiah and Simon Langer competed in Nordic combined, a discipline which combines ski jumping and Nordic skiing. All three learned the sport through the Cloquet Ski Club, which makes its home at Pine Valley Recreation Area. Having ski jumps and such an...
Despite a bad winter for practice and competition, three Cloquet ski jumpers are headed to Alaska next week to compete in the 2024 ski jumping and Nordic combined Junior National Championships. Isaiah Langer, 14, Simon Langer, 12, and Joel Linden, 14, all qualified to compete in Nordic combined in the 16-and-younger-age group, a sport that combines ski jumping and Nordic skiing. The competition in Anchorage Feb. 27 to March 2 will be Isaiah's second Junior Nationals. Last year's event was actual...
When Cloquet High School was racking up Minnesota state ski titles, the Quinn brothers were key to the early wins. Identical twins Dave and Don Quinn graduated in 1966. They, and their coaches, Joe Nowak, Mike Marciniak and John Luomala, were part of a very successful Lumberjacks program. But this column is less about their impressive high school achievements than what Dave and Don went on to accomplish, including a one-two finish in the second American Birkebeiner race in 1974. Held in Cable...
Scottie Kevin Hecker was born on March 4, 1962, to Douglas and Margaret (Evenson) Hecker in Cloquet. During his childhood he lived in Blackhoof Valley and enjoyed playing basketball. Scottie graduated from Barnum High School in 1980. Following graduation, he worked as an operator at Chemstar in Carlton. In 1981, Scottie met the love of his life, Tammy Porter, at the Mahtowa Tavern. They were united in marriage on July 31, 1993, in Wisconsin Dells. They lived in the Twin Cities for 20 years and...
Wendy Kaye Twomey (née Rodd) passed away peacefully on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024. Wendy was preceded in death by her beloved parents, George and Arlene. Wendy is survived by her siblings, Randy (Connie), Tayna, Kerry (Roni), Timm (Nancy), Scott and Kipp. Wendy is also survived by her children, Christina Jungbauer (Mike), Kyle Kiminski (Erin), Connor Twomey and Patrick Twomey. She is also survived by three grandchildren whom she adored, Carolyn, Kameron and Kyleigh. Wendy was born on Sept, 24,...
The gentle breeze was swirling at 7 miles per hour from a north-northwest direction. It was sunny, and a beautiful Groundhog Day, Friday, Feb. 2, 2024. Earlier in the day, Punxsutawney Phil had predicted an early spring. Being retired from full-time employment, I have the luxury of taking afternoon walks, sometimes with my bride or others, at various regional locations. On this particular day, since there was hardly any snow, I was walking the 2.5K loop at Cloquet's Pine Valley Ski Area and...
Russell Leonard Berglund, 77, passed away on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024 in his home with family by his side after a lengthy journey with Alzheimer's disease. Russ was born Aug. 18, 1946, to Leonard and Cora (Lund). He grew up on his family's farm in Brevator Township, where he developed his love for gardening and farm equipment. After graduating from Albrook High school in 1964, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserves, where he spent two years of active duty in the Vietnam War on the USS Valley...
Friday, Jan. 26 Girls Hockey CEC vs Chisago Lakes, 7 Boys Hockey CEC at Bemidji, 7 Boys Basketball Barnum vs Two Harbors, 7:15 Carlton/Wrenshall vs Hill City, 7:15 Cromwell-Wright at McGregor, 7:15 Esko at ML/WR, 7:15 Wrestling CEC at Mora, 5 Saturday, Jan. 27 Girls Hockey MLA at Kasson- Mantorville, 3 Boys Hockey MLA at Wadena, 2 Girls Basketball Cloquet vs North Branch, 1 ML/WR at Ely, 2:30 Boys Basketball CEC at South St. Paul, 10 Barnum vs Two Harbors, 7:15 Esko vs Breck at Chanhassen, 4 Skiing CEC Nordic at Ely, Hidden Valley, 9:30...
Darrell Charles "Butch" Swanson, 74, of Barnum passed away with family by his side on Jan. 12, 2024, in Essentia Health-St. Mary's Medical Center in Duluth. Butch joined the U.S. Air Force right out of high school and served his country for four years, including a tour in Vietnam. Butch enjoyed many activities, including golfing, bowling, deer hunting, fishing, and volunteering to keep the lawn manicured at the Blackhoof Valley Community Center. He was an avid sports enthusiast and loved the...
A suspected double murder/suicide at the Super 8 hotel in Cloquet Monday resulted in the death of a Cloquet woman and two male hotel guests, one of the men the killer. The shooting forced the evacuation of the hotel and nearby businesses and a community lockdown as authorities searched for a suspect. That search ended in the hotel parking lot, where the suspected shooter was found dead with evidence suggesting a self-inflicted gunshot wound. By midweek, investigators still had no information on...
For Cloquet's Julie Samuelson, even climbing a volcano in Guatemala can feel like home. "It got pretty serious, dealing with elevation and when the weather turned to crud," she said. "It was kind of like getting socked in by Lake Superior with the icky winds and fog." Samuelson, 56, was in South America last month, alongside 17 other kidney donors. They were there to summit three volcanoes across seven days as part of the second One Kidney Climb. The first, in 2022, saw a team of 20 living donor...
Pine Knot News subscriber and two-time state ski jumping champion (1966, 1967) Rick Nelson stopped in recently with an obscure item for show and tell. It was a Northwest Paper Company notebook, complete with one of the company's iconic Canadian Mountie paintings, this one showing a mountie on horseback sharing what appears to be a wanted poster with three men working outside. While Northwest Paper notebooks are fairly rare these days - as the company was a precursor to both Potlatch and Sappi -...
It was a December like no other in Carlton County, not even the strange one in 1877-78 that augured a remarkable winter into the spring. In short, history was made as the region and the state had its warmest December. This comes after history was made last season in high snowfall totals. Cloquet saw temperatures average nearly 10 degrees warmer than normal last month at 25.1 degrees at the Cloquet Forestry Center. Recordings were higher at the Fond du Lac Reservation weather station (29.2) and...
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 city's woodland park hopping in the winter months. To find the skiers, one had to travel 12 miles to Duluth's Spirit Mountain, where they can make snow. More than 200 high school skiers from area schools were skiing quarter-mile loops next to the Grand Avenue Nordic Center on Thursday, Dec. 14. They...
