10 Years Ago · April 16, 2001
The Grand Portage community felt the pain of cuts last week as the school board voted to terminate the contracts of two of its teachers. The cuts come as a result of the state-mandated statutory operating debt plan and are echoed in the far western end of the county. Along with staff cuts comes the directive to send children in grades 4 and 5 to Sawtooth Elementary in Grand Marais and to send all Special Education children to the main campus, regardless of their age.
Power outages caused by wind and flooding due to the heavy rains April 7 kept Grand Marais utility crews on their toes. Electrical crews were kept scrambling by a major power outage in the city, and water and sewer workers had to deal with more than 10 times the normal amount of run-off.
20 Years Ago · April 15, 1991
The county is planning a two-phase road improvement project for the Gunflint Trail. The first phase will be the section from the Trout Lake Road to the Northern Light Lake boat landing. The second phase will be from there to the Greenwood Road. Road design will be to federal standards, and some areas will require substantial clearing along the right of way. The Forest Service said last week that it could not meet the county’s deadlines for input. “We need to know about these projects further in advance,” a Forest Service spokesman said. County Engineer Mike Tardy said the delays caused by the Forest Service may postpone the project beyond this construction season.
A small gathering of the Rainbow people will be returning to the Barker Lake area this spring. According to Larry Dawson of the Forest Service’s Tofte station, a regional gathering has been called for final clean-up of last year’s national gathering site. The vast majority of the clean-up was done immediately after last year’s gathering. But in spite of an amazingly thorough job, a few problems remain. After the leaves fell last fall, a lot of items appeared. Grouse hunters found backpacks, soggy rolls of toilet paper, hunks of plastic and other treasures that had been hidden by the leaves. One Tofte resident even found a hand-tooled leather dog collar that his hunting dog is now wearing.
50 Years Ago · April 13, 1961
A trip to Grand Marais with 20 FFA boys on a fishing trip gave Arnold Killen of Canby an idea for a new type of minnow bucket. On the trip, his problem was to keep 500 minnows alive while on an extended trip to this area. His solution was to rig a 10-gallon cream can with a hose attached to an inflated truck tire. By controlling the air from the tire into the can he was able to keep the minnows alive. The inventor claims minnows can be kept alive indefinitely as long as the air is kept pumped into the bucket.
Those who came to the Lutsen Business Association meeting Tuesday night were delightfully entertained by the wit and humor of Toshio Matishita in his talk of his homeland, Japan. During a question-and-answer period he was asked what he disliked about America. Stopping to ponder a moment he shyly answered, “Lutefisk.”
The snow has disappeared in a large portion of the woods. It would appear that the lakes are going to be low and unless we get some sizeable spring rains the woods will be unusually dry.
90 Years Ago · April 14, 1921
The zoology class had a good deal of trouble in securing birds for dissection in class. The boys, however, finally got enough for everyone in the class and work was begun on them last week. The work of studying the organs of these higher animals is very interesting.
The local fishermen are fast returning to their regular occupation. John Anderson had a fine catch Monday. He had 150 hooks set and got 1,000 pounds of trout.
Carl Hagberg of Lutsen was in the village today and called at the News-Herald office to renew his subscription. He was also doing a little shopping in the stores, and is getting ready to start planting. Adolph Thirson of Hovland also came in to renew his acquaintance with the editor. He is one of the oldest subscribers to this paper.
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