All aboard! The Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad re-opens after 3 year hiatus

The Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad held their first excursion train ride Saturday after a nearly three hiatus.

The Duluth River Train travels down the tracks along the St. Louis river. A set of tracks that carry a lot of history.

“The Lake Superior Mississippi railroad [is] the first railroad in 1870 from St. Paul to Duluth,” says David Moore the Vice President of Engineering.

To find ticket information for the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad you can click here. They will continue to do 2 runs across all the weekends until the end of summer.

Originally the railroad had to close in 2020 due to the pandemic. But then another setback occurred in 2022. “We were shut down for the remediation of the US Steel’s Spirit Lake site in Morgan Park,” says David Bolgrien, the Chairman of the LSMRR. “That is now being cleaned up and the tracks are back.”

The team of volunteers are ecstatic to have passengers back on board. “It’s an all volunteer organization,” says Bolgrien, “We had three years of no passengers, we didn’t lose too many volunteers. We have a core group of folks and a growing number of folks that just want to do it. They’re proud of showing off the river, they know the history very well… And people kept that excitement over the course of a three year shut down and they are showing it off today with passengers.”