Star An oceangoing freighter sits at anchor on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. In the foreground are the Duluth aerial lift bridge and Duluth harbor. A graveyard of flattened automobiles. Decaying and defunct warehouses and factories.
People stroll where junked cars once rusted.
Motels, restaurants, shops, tours, a convention center and the new Great Lakes Aquarium, billed as the only all-freshwater aquarium in the country, have supplanted the warehouses and factories. At the northern end of Interstate 35, this town of about 85,000 people probably wasn't part of your vacation plans. You might even have considered it a dump, and once it was. But a renaissance has taken place in Duluth. It's still a jumping-off point for vacation spots in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Canada.