The character of Hermantown, Minnesota
Part of the Hermantown neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
Hermantown feels like a place organized around households rather than around a street. The residential fabric is subdivisions and section-line roads, big lots with tree lines between them, basketball hoops on level driveways, and boats and campers parked beside three-car garages. It is quiet in a way that the older neighborhoods below the hill are not, because there is no through traffic, no rail line, and no commercial block generating evening activity.
The social center of gravity is unmistakably the school campus and the arena. On a winter Friday the parking lot at the hockey rink is the busiest place in the city, and the Hawks' game is the closest thing Hermantown has to a downtown. In summer it moves to Fichtner and Rose Road, where four nights a week of youth baseball and softball fill the complexes.
A Saturday here is practical and car-based. Errands on Miller Hill in the morning, a trail or the wellness center in the afternoon, a drive down to Duluth or over to Proctor if you want a restaurant with a room. In winter add Spirit Mountain fifteen minutes south, skiing at Keene Creek or Piedmont, and a lot of driveway snowblowing that is, at least, on the flat.
What Hermantown does not have is texture. There is no historic core, no independent bookstore, no bar with a hundred years of memory in it. That absence is the honest trade for what the city does offer, and buyers who need a neighborhood to feel like a place should take it seriously rather than assume they will grow into it.
Landmarks
The region's commercial airport, on Hermantown's eastern edge, which is why the drive to a flight is about eight minutes from most of the city. It also hosts the Minnesota Air National Guard's 148th Fighter Wing, the Bulldogs, flying Block 50 F-16CM fighters.
The city ice arena, home of the Hawks and the youth hockey association that feeds them.
The YMCA-operated wellness center with an aquatics center, gym, and group classes, one of the largest indoor recreation facilities on this side of the hill.
Character next door
Directly east over the Duluth line, older above-the-hill housing at a lower price with the same Miller Hill access.
ProctorTen minutes south, a smaller school district and much lower prices in an older railroad town.
KenwoodSoutheast toward UMD, established 1950s and 1960s housing on the Duluth side with ISD 709 schools.
PiedmontDown the hill toward Lincoln Park, older stock with hillside views and the Piedmont trail network.
Canosia Township and Pike LakeTen minutes north, lake lots and rural parcels with ISD 700 or ISD 704 school assignment depending on address.