Rendezvous Days weekend turns out large crowds


It was another fantastic Rendezvous Days weekend at Grand Portage National Monument’s annual featured event, with 145 historic re-enactor camps on-site with approximately 300 re-enactors from all over the United States, Ontario, and Manitoba sharing their passion for history of the fur trade era. Over 4,500 visitors attended the event over a very warm weekend. Here are a few of […]

Fire on Rollins Creek Road destroys cabin and bunkhouse


At approximately 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 14, a call came in to Cook County 911 Dispatch from a passerby reporting visible smoke and a residential structure engulfed in flame at 4 County Road 34 (Rollins Creek Road) in Lutsen Township. Lutsen and Tofte fire departments along with Lutsen EMS and the Cook County Sheriff ’s Office were dispatched and […]

Cook County Higher Ed awarded Lloyd K. Johnson Foundation grant


Cook County Higher Education (CCHE) has received an $80,000 grant from the Lloyd K. Johnson Foundation for the 2018-2019 school year. The grant is comprised of two components: a $30,000 grant for tuition scholarships for Cook County residents enrolled in long distance post-secondary degree or certificate programs and a $50,000 grant to support CCHE’s student support services. Currently, CCHE is […]

Young first to graduate from county’s drug court program


If not for Cook County’s drug court program and the gift of salvation, Tom Young said he might very well be in prison, or worse. Young, 35, had been a drug and alcohol addict since he was 11. “From 11 to 19 I used alcohol and marijuana. From 19 to 33 I was addicted to meth.” He was attracted to […]

Primary election results should lead to exciting November 6 election


Cook County voter wide turnout for the off-year primary was 54.5 percent, up from the 24 percent who cast ballots in the primary election two years ago. Incumbent county commissioner Ginny Storlie received 193 votes to lead her three challengers in the District 5 primary. Storlie will square off against Bruce Martinson, who garnered 150 votes to finish second, in […]

Annual Incomes

Do You Know?

In 1957, a committee led by then-Senator John F. Kennedy selected Senator Robert A. Taft as one of five great senators whose portraits would adorn the President’s Room off the Senate floor. Taft was also included in Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning volume, Profiles in Courage, featuring short biographies describing acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States senators. While […]

Please save Grand Marais

My husband and I vacation in Grand Marais every year. It is our home away from home and for a good reason: the peace that we find in the wilderness of the area and the beauty of this quaint little town along Lake Superior. We do not come here to see the lake and the scenery from a high-rise condo […]

Writers thank Mike Kunshier for his years of service

While we do not presume to speak for others, we are confident that all present and past members of Gunflint Hills Golf Course as well as regular visitors will join us in thanking Mike Kunshier for 27 years of wonderful service as golf course superintendent. Dwain Staples once rapped the back of a wooden church pew and declared, “Mike could […]

Jr. American Legion baseball team showed great sportsmanship

On the weekend of August 10, your Junior Legion VFW baseball team participated in the 2018 Division II Jr. Legion Baseball tournament in Montevideo, MN. Over the weekend eight teams from around Minnesota played for the right to be called Division II Jr. Legion champions. As tournament director, I wanted to take a moment to commend your team on a […]

Freedom of speech

Our Founding Fathers spoke and wrote time and again about the necessity for a free people to have freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom to know, freedom to ask questions about what is going on and why the people in authority do what they do. If freedom of speech were limited or abolished, they said, tyranny would follow and […]