The history of Morgan Park, Duluth, Minnesota
Part of the Morgan Park neighborhood guide. Back to the full guide.
Morgan Park exists because of a bargain between a corporation and a state. US Steel built its Duluth Works on the St. Louis River, with production beginning in 1913, and built the company town alongside it. The site made sense: level ground, river access, rail connections, and proximity to the iron ore moving down from the Mesabi Range.
The site made sense on every industrial measure: level ground beside deep water, rail connections already running west, and a short haul from the iron ore coming down from the Mesabi Range. Duluth had spent forty years shipping raw ore out to be smelted elsewhere, and the Duluth Works was the state's attempt to keep some of that value at the head of the lakes.
The town was designed rather than platted. Streets, lot relationships, setbacks, and building groupings were laid out as a single scheme, and the housing was built almost entirely of concrete block manufactured on site. Company ownership extended to the houses themselves, rented only to employees, and to the services: trash, lawns, snow, health care, policing, and fire protection were all handled by US Steel. The school, hospital, and community center were described at the time as the most modern in the country.
Morgan Park was built as a segregated company town. US Steel rented its concrete houses to officials, managers, and skilled workers under company rules that reflected the era, while much of the unskilled workforce lived in company housing in the adjacent Gary-New Duluth area. That reflects documented corporate practice from the 1910s and says nothing about who lives in these neighborhoods today.
The rest of the arc is the arc of American heavy industry. The Duluth Works ran for decades, sustained the far western neighborhoods, wound down, and closed, leaving a remediation site and a town that had outlived its employer. US Steel eventually sold the housing, and Morgan Park became an ordinary neighborhood of privately owned homes that happen to be made of concrete and arranged according to a 1913 plan.
History next door
Immediately southwest, the neighborhood that housed the mill's other workforce, at similar prices.
Spirit ValleyNortheast, the nearest full commercial street and the closest thing to a main street for this end of the city.
DenfeldNortheast, more housing stock and the high school.
Fond du LacSouthwest along the river, the oldest settlement in Duluth and even quieter.
SmithvilleBetween Morgan Park and Spirit Valley along the river.