Duluth Armory History, Including the Role Played During Our Last Pandemic in 1918

The life of Dylan is one of legends. The man himself has become something of a mythological figure during the course of his lifetime. One of the signature stories in that legendary life is his trip to Duluth to hear Buddy Holly at the Duluth National Guard Armory the last evening of January 1959. Three days later Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) were dead, killed in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.

The Armory encounter made an impression on the young Bobby Zimmerman, who referred to it later in interviews as well as in his autobiography. No doubt that tragedy that occurred in an Iowa cornfield made an equally powerful impression. (Read the story here.)

I mention all this because a friend who serves on the Armory board posted on my Facebook wall a link to Zenith City Online noting that this day in 1915 was the official opening of the historic Duluth Armory. [This blog post was originally published on November 22, 2015.]

From very early on the Duluth Armory had a storied existence. World War I was in effect, though the U.S. had not fully engaged. Nevertheless the Armory served as home for a full-scale regiment, comprised of the 34th (Red Bull) Division and the 125th Field Artillery.

It didn't take long for the Armory to get put to use and in 1918 our boys joined the Doughboys to engage in a war many people still don't understand. 317 Duluth soldiers lost their lives in Europe as a result.

But the worst was yet to come.

That autumn the Spanish Flu epidemic reached Duluth. The flu was so deadly that on October 8 the city commissioners put the entire city on lockdown. People were forbidden from shopping, going to church or congregating of any kind. It was a city-wide quarantine.

Four days after this edict, the Cloquet Fire hit. When I first visited Hermantown, just over the hill from Duluth's Western rim, in the late 1970's I couldn't help but notice that there were no really tall trees. I learned then about the Cloquet Fire. The reality is that the fire burned everything South to North around the entire outskirts of Duluth. Innumerable homes were lost, and more than 600 died. People who had gone to work that morning were unable to return home that night, many wondering whether their loved ones escaped or were consumed.

Where did all these people? Most were housed at the Armory and a few other structures where people could be attended to. Unfortunately, the Spanish influenza was in full force, and all these people in one place only contributed to its spread. Over 300 lives were taken by the flu. It was a dark year for the Zenith City.

As George Harrison once penned, all things must pass, and certainly these dark clouds of 1918 ultimately lifted after a season. No doubt our current quarantine and 2020 is challenging for our nation and the world, but it's not our first historic crisis. Let's pray that we avoid the worst, find our "best selves" as we come through to the other side.

Related Links
dulutharmory.org/about/
My 2013 Armory Update
The 1918 influenza pandemic killed thousands of Minnesotans

Historic Armory Post Card is from the informative Historic Duluth website Zenith City Online. Thank you, Tony, for your invaluable caretaking of Duluth's history.
PRE-ORDER an autographed copy of Tony Dierckins' Duluth: An Urban Biography

Information about our tragedies of 1918 came from a presentation by Dan Hartman at a Libations at the Library event here in Duluth.