Getting around Gary-New Duluth, Minnesota
Part of the Gary-New Duluth neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
This is a car neighborhood and there is no honest way to soften that. Downtown Duluth is about 22 minutes, Miller Hill about 20, Superior about 22 and the airport about 26.
Commonwealth Avenue, which is Minnesota Highway 23, is the spine and effectively the only through route, running northeast toward West Duluth and southwest toward Fond du Lac and Carlton County. Becks Road climbs north toward Proctor and Grand Avenue carries you into Spirit Valley and the rest of the city. The Oliver Bridge crosses the St. Louis River to Oliver, Wisconsin at the southern edge of the neighborhood.
Transit service at this end of the city is minimal, so plan on a car per working adult. The walk score of 35 reflects reality: the Commonwealth Avenue strip and the school and park are genuinely walkable from much of the neighborhood, and nothing else is.
Winter is this neighborhood's quiet advantage. Because it sits on flat river-valley ground rather than on Duluth's slope, the steep icy approaches that define winter in most of the city are simply absent here, and Highway 23 is a maintained state route. The cost is distance rather than difficulty: in a storm everything is still a drive, and it is a longer one.
Biking: The Waabizheshikana river corridor trail and the Mission Creek singletrack at the western edge. On-road riding is along Highway 23, which carries traffic at speed and is not a comfortable ride for everyone.
Getting around next door
Directly northeast, the concrete company town built by the same industry, and the neighborhood this one's history is inseparable from.
Fond du LacSouthwest across Sargent Creek, older and thinner, with no store or school of its own.
Spirit ValleyThe nearest full commercial center, about five miles northeast, for groceries, pharmacy and hardware.
DenfeldThe high school neighborhood and the west side's best-value housing grid.