Decades of effort revitalize St. Louis River
Work to mediate more than 100 years of industrial pollution and dumping in Duluth, Minn., has reached new milestones.
Below is the first installment of the story about the St. Louis River's revitalization. The second installment will be published on Wednesday, June 18.
DULUTH, Minn — On a quiet early summer morning, moody clouds drift across the sky and wind riffles tufts of wild rice emerging from cleaned-up shallows of the St. Louis River. Two kayaks add a pop of orange and yellow to the wide expanse of water as the historic Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad scenic train hugs the shoreline on its way back to Duluth.
While many travelers have felt the St. Louis River thunder beneath the swinging suspension bridge at Jay Cooke State Park in Carlton about 20 miles away or glimpsed its distant shimmer from overlooks at Skyline Drive, Enger Tower, or the Thompson Hill Rest Area, few have experienced the river up close. It flows from the Fond du Lac Dam through western Duluth into Lake Superior and provides a 12,000-acre freshwater estuary.
That’s changing quickly as decades of work to mediate more than 100 years of industrial pollution and dumping has reached new milestones. The river was designated a National Water Trail by the National Park Service in 2020 and officials opened a new section of the Waabizheshikana (Marten) Trail along the shore. The almost 5-mile shoreline trail will eventually double in length.
“It’s taken 30-some years to come up with a plan, do the testing, figure out what needs to be remediated and restored,” said Kris Eilers, executive director of the St. Louis River Alliance. “It’s now a designated National Water Trail. That’s only possible because it’s cleaner.”
Reconnecting people to the river
The St. Louis River Alliance’s brochures help introduce people to the river with a map of its numerous bays, islands and even lakes. It includes 11 paddling loops and offers cultural history and information on some of the river’s industrial history, and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, which was heavily involved in restoration work.
The alliance began in the 1980s when the river’s legacy of pollution led officials to flag it as a national Area of Concern for the Great Lakes region.
Longtime locals, such as Charlie Stauduhar, owner of Spirit Lake Marina, grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, when the St. Louis was considered “a cesspool” after decades of heavy industry — including lumber mills, a steel plant and a shipbuilder — all preceding any clean water protection laws.
U.S. Steel, which provided jobs for West Duluth’s working-class families from 1915 to 1981, had been boarded up and deemed a Superfund site, making it the largest and most complex contamination removal project along Spirit Lake, a 200-acre widening of the St. Louis River. It required three years and more than $165 million to clean up what’s now 92 acres of green space with native plantings and trails.
“We expected the opening of the U.S. Steel site would be popular, but we’re seeing activity there every day,” Knettel said, and its Morgan Park neighborhood has been a hub for new recreational programming.
His staff has been working with a National Park Service employee based in Duluth’s parks office to provide low and no-cost activities for underserved youth that will introduce them to fishing, birding, hiking, and how-to paddling programs along the river, all of which have had great turnouts.
Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten
Upcoming projects along the St. Louis will include more public water accesses, fishing piers, and trailhead access points as the Waabizheshikana Trail is extended.
As more people are seeing the river up close—many for the first time—through walks along trails, paddling loops, or excursions on the historic Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, the positive effect of its cleanup is energizing the neighborhoods along its shores.
The RiverWest development between the river and Spirit Mountain Recreation Area opened last summer with a Ski Hut Adventure Center with bike and ski rentals, a Burnett Dairy Cheese Store with picnic foods and pizzas, and new vacation townhomes with two to four bedrooms that bring travelers closer to the river.
“[The St. Louis] riverfront] is going to really start to take off and become a destination for people not only in our city but from outside the area,” Knettel said. “[Duluth is] an outdoor hub and the cleanup of the estuary is going to make that more significant.”
This story was edited and fact-checked by Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten.