Getting around Central Hillside, Duluth, Minnesota
Part of the Central Hillside neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
Getting around from the Central Hillside is genuinely easy in three directions and genuinely hard in one, and the one is the one that matters in winter.
By car, this is the shortest commute in the guide after downtown itself: about four minutes to downtown, eight to the Miller Hill retail and medical corridor, twelve to Superior and twelve to the airport. Mesaba Avenue and Central Entrance are the routes off the hill, and East 4th Street is the cross-slope arterial.
By bus, this neighborhood is unusually well served for its price. The DTA hub sits at the bottom of the hill downtown, where effectively every route in the system converges, and the neighborhood has its own route, the 114 Central Hillside to Observation Hill. The 104 runs the East 4th Street local and the 105 the East 9th Street local, both cross-slope, plus the 101 and 102 Go Line circulators and the cross-city 103 (DTA routes and schedules, accessed 2026-08-14).
On foot, plan by contour rather than by distance. East and west along 4th Street is level and connects the co-op, the bus and the East Hillside. North and south is a climb of a hundred feet or more per few blocks, so downtown is an easy walk out and a serious walk home.
On a bike, the same rule applies with more force, and the compensation is at the top: the Traverse and the Superior Hiking Trail start where the neighborhood ends, so this is one of the best addresses in the city for anyone who actually rides trails.
Winter driving is the honest problem, and it deserves plain language. These are the steepest inhabited grades in Duluth. Several numbered avenues are effectively unusable in ice and some are closed or made one-way for the season. Mesaba Avenue and East 4th Street get plowed early and the residential avenues between them do not, and they are narrow with cars parked both sides. Duluth averages about 90 inches of snow a season on the 1991 to 2020 normals (NWS Duluth, accessed 2026-08-14). Winter tires are a requirement here, not an upgrade, and off-street parking is worth paying real money for. Work out which cross-slope street you will use before your first storm.
Major roads: Mesaba Avenue, East 4th Street, Central Entrance, Skyline Parkway, Superior Street, Interstate 35 below the neighborhood.
DTA bus routes: 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 114. Routes and timetables change, so confirm with the DTA.
Biking: Cross-slope is fine and up-slope is a serious climb, which is the whole story. East 4th Street and the other lettered cross streets run level and connect the neighborhood east and west without altitude. Everything from the Lakewalk and downtown is a climb home. The compensation is that the Duluth Traverse and the Superior Hiking Trail are at the top of your street rather than a drive away, so this is one of the best addresses in the city for anyone who actually rides trails.
The hill: This is the steepest inhabited ground in the guide. The neighborhood climbs from roughly 700 feet at Third Street to well above 1,000 feet at Skyline Parkway in about a mile of horizontal distance, which is why the numbered avenues here run as stairs in places and why several of them close or go one-way in winter. The reward is that a large share of the housing stock has an unobstructed view over downtown, the harbor and the lift bridge, from windows that cost a fraction of what the same view costs on the east side.
Getting around next door
Directly below, a four-minute drive or a walkable downhill, with the transit hub, the library, the theaters and most of the restaurants.
Lincoln ParkWest across Mesaba Avenue, the Craft District, at a comparable price with breweries and a creek gorge instead of a hospital district.
East End / EndionEast along the lake, historic housing with lake views at meaningfully higher prices.
Canal ParkDownhill and across the freeway, the lakefront tourism district with the region's flat-ground condominium market.