Bardon Peak
West Skyline Parkway above Smithville, Duluth, MN 55808
About Bardon Peak
Bardon Peak is the overlook on West Skyline Parkway above Duluth's Smithville neighborhood, and it offers one of the best views of the St. Louis River valley anywhere in the city. According to the city's official neighborhood map it sits inside Smithville's boundary, which gives a small far-west residential pocket one of the more dramatic pieces of public landscape in Duluth.
The view is different from the Lake Superior overlooks most visitors know. From here you are looking down and west over the river valley, the estuary and the Wisconsin side, rather than east over open water, and it is at its best in late September when the hardwoods on the western hillside turn.
The Superior Hiking Trail runs this ridge, and the Magney-Snively Natural Area with its old-growth sugar maple adjoins it further west, so the overlook works as a trailhead as well as a viewpoint.
Note the seasonal access: sections of Skyline Parkway west of the city are gravel and close to vehicles in winter, which turns them into ski, snowshoe and fat-bike routes.
Good to know: St. Louis River valley overlook, Skyline Parkway access, Superior Hiking Trail access, fall colour.
Neighborhoods it serves
River-corridor housing below, Bardon Peak above, and a radical labor college in its past.
RiversideA shipyard village on Spirit Lake, with the Munger Trail through the middle.
Morgan ParkThe concrete company town US Steel built, and the neighborhood that outlived the mill.
Norton ParkWhere the Munger Trail starts, between two creeks on the river.
Where these facts come from
- Wikipedia, Smithville (Duluth), which records Bardon Peak as within the neighborhood's official city boundary; City of Duluth, Skyline Parkway accessed 2026-08-13
Last reviewed 2026-08-13 by Guide editorial.