Local lore in Cloquet, Minnesota

• On October 12, 1918, Cloquet burned to the ground. Almost every building you see here was put up after that date, which is why a 1920s bungalow is the default house in this city.
• Frank Lloyd Wright designed exactly one gas station in his life and it is on a corner in Cloquet, built in 1958, on the National Register, and still pumping fuel.
• The high school teams are the Lumberjacks. The city was founded as a lumber-milling town at a falls on the St. Louis River, and the mill is still the biggest thing in town. Nobody here has ever had to explain the mascot.
• Gordy's Hi-Hat opened in 1960, is still run by the Lundquist family, and has been on the Food Network. It is seasonal, and the day it opens in spring is a genuine local event.
• The Fond du Lac Band's reservation begins at the city's western edge, and Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College gives a city of 12,500 a two-year college campus, which almost no comparable town in Minnesota has.
• Cloquet is far enough from Lake Superior to be outside the lake-effect snow belt. Residents watch Duluth get buried on the east side while the mill keeps running here, and they are quietly smug about it.

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