Duluth’s Underground History Uncovered

The Real Stories Behind Duluth's Tunnels

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In the midst of the hustle and bustle of modern Duluth, it’s easy to forget how humble the city’s beginnings were.

But eventually, as shipping and industry boomed across the Midwest, so did Duluth, making it one of the richest cities in America.

“It used to be a world class, super industrial, port city, like ‘The New Chicago,’” explains Dan Turner, a historian who moved to Duluth from St. Paul around six years ago.

Business owner Rod Raymond says he was attracted to that history when he and his partners bought the old city hall building and founded a restaurant now known as Tycoons.

“The story of Duluth was created here, with old money,” Raymond said.

Then, his head tilts back in a sort of day dream: “You do that ‘Titanic’ thing and you sit back and you – whoosh! – wonder what it would have looked like back then. It creates the mystical, that sense of charm that I think the customers want.”

Underneath the city hall building is a basement – not a bar called the Rathskellar – but just a few years ago, it was a space long forgotten by time.

“These walls were covered in coal dust. This floor was muddy; we would have been standing in ankle-deep water,” Raymond said.

For Raymond, preserving this building and this underground space was less about preserving history and more about preserving stories.

And invoking in his customers a certain feeling, a certain mood.

“I’m not alone in this,” he explains. “The preservationists are a cult. We’re a little culture in Duluth. A culture that sometimes gets beat up, and justifiably so. I err on the unreasonable side, and I hope I’m just not too unreasonable.”

Dan Turner, the historian who has written a thorough piece on the history of Duluth’s underground and its tunnels and culverts and passageways, says preservation isn’t the exact goal of his work.

“I feel like I’m a preservation ally, even though I don’t identify as a preservationist,” Turner said.

When Turner researched the underground history of Duluth, he sought to find the real stories.

And the real stories weren’t fantasy, but he says were still fascinating.

“We don’t need preservation of the tunnels. They perform an infrastructural task,” Turner explains. “If they weren’t there, Duluth would get destroyed every time there’s a rainstorm.”

Turner talks about the city’s original plan for where the Aerial Lift Bridge is today – they originally planned a big tunnel underneath the canal.

“There are fascinating diagrams – it was a very serious project,” he says. “There was a very serious project to tunnel beneath the canal both for rail traffic, street car traffic, and pedestrian traffic. There were multiple tunnels depending on how much money you could get. Of course, they never got the money.”

And as for the tunnels that are beneath Duluth’s downtown, and the stories they’ve garnered over the years, even a dreamer like Rod Raymond admits the truth is a lot more reasonable.

“The tunnels weren’t designed for moonshine carrying or designed for conspiracy theory, or the Illuminati or the masons to meet,” Raymond said. “The tunnels were designed to run the plumbing through!”

That still doesn’t stop the man – and those like him – from imagining old Duluth with a more mystical lens.

“How cool is it to preserve an old building that was otherwise going to get the wrecking ball – going to get the hook?” Raymond said. “And how cool is it to garner the mystique, to capture the mystical.”

After all, it’s the sense of imagination – or the quest for truth – that uncovers the best stories to tell.