Local lore in Fond du Lac, Duluth, Minnesota

• The fur post came first, and everything else followed it. The American Fur Company built here in 1817 because this is where the canoe routes from the interior met Lake Superior, and the 1856 townsite was laid out on the post's ground rather than on open land.
• Two treaties carry this place's name. The Treaties of Fond du Lac of 1826 and 1847 were signed here, which makes this small riverbank one of the more historically consequential pieces of ground in Minnesota.
• Mission Creek is named for a mission. The American Board of Missions sent Edmund Ely here in 1833, and the creek and the mountain bike trails that now run beside it both carry the name forward.
• Duluth's founders passed through. The 1856 townsite party included Reuben Carlton, who gave his name to Carlton County, and Joshua B. Culver, who became Duluth's first mayor.
• People used to come here by boat for a picnic. From the 1880s through the 1940s, steam-powered excursion boats carried picnickers from downtown Duluth up the estuary to Chambers Grove, which is roughly a fourteen-mile boat ride for an afternoon in a park.
• The 2012 flood rewrote the riverbank. June 2012 took out much of Chambers Grove's infrastructure, and the rebuild that followed added the interpretive trail that now tells the site's history.

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