Local lore in Allouez-Itasca (Superior), Wisconsin
Part of the Allouez-Itasca (Superior) neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
- The ore docks here were once the largest gravity iron ore dock installation in the world. Great Northern started building on Allouez Bay in 1892 and never really stopped.
- The conveyor is 3.5 miles long. Built starting in 1966 for about $8 million and running at full operation from 1977, it is also the source of the dust that has shaped this neighborhood's relationship with the railroad for half a century.
- BNSF has been paying people to wash their houses for about fifty years. Annual claims averaging $200 to $500 to roughly 200 households, halted in 2020 and restored that October after the city council objected.
- Wisconsin Point and Minnesota Point together form one of the longest freshwater sandbars in the world, split by the Superior Entry. Duluth's half is Park Point and costs several times as much.
- The Point is the best birding in the western Great Lakes and it is usually empty. May and September bring people from several states; a Tuesday in July brings almost no one.
- Nemadji Golf Course runs 36 holes out here and has been named the Duluth News Tribune's best golf course six years running, which is a lot of golf for the far edge of a city of 26,000.
Local lore next door
West along East Second Street, the city's historic residential district with the period architecture.
Downtown SuperiorAbout fifteen minutes west, the Tower Avenue commercial core with the breweries and civic buildings.
South End (South Superior)Southwest, quieter postwar family housing with far better errand access.
North End (Superior)West toward the harbor, the other industrial-adjacent neighborhood, with the brewery district.
Billings Park (Superior)The far west end of the city, the quiet river-bluff counterpart to this far east end.