![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
Once, a wind-whipped sand spit was not the most desirable address in Duluth.
The Ojibwe preferred the lush estuary of the St. Louis River, which flows into Lake Superior at what today is Duluth-Superior Harbor. The French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, for whom the city was named, didn’t waste much time on the lakefront when he arrived in 1679. Nor did the early fur traders, who hustled straight up the St. Louis, which, via the little Savanna River, connects Lake Superior to the Mississippi.
The St. Louis looks sleepy, but it's the largest Lake Superior tributary in the United States. With Ontario's Nipigon River, it contributes about one-fourth of the lake's annual water input.
Their glory days are long gone, but trains will never die.
Thanks to the almost evangelical zeal of their devotees, the locomotives, coaches and cabooses of the 20th century still are serving passengers today — on excursions and as overnight lodging, if not for transportation.
Noisy, smelly and outmoded, these trains still are marvelously evocative of a more romantic era, and those who love them are legion. So rather than fading gracefully into the mists of time, they’re bellowing into the present, with plumes of black smoke and earsplitting whistles.
Once, passenger trains crisscrossed the state, and lighthouses guided sailors on the Great Lakes.
Trains and lighthouses are beloved relics now, symbols of a simpler past. In the iPod era, they seem antique, like Grandpa's buggy or Grandma's butter churn.
But don't relegate them to history's dustbin just yet.
Thanks to volunteers who love locomotives, excursion trains live on.
And these days, trains also are rolling entertainment venues, offering staged robberies, murder mysteries and beer tasting in addition to barbecue, pizza, brunch, box lunch, happy hour and holiday trains.
Of course, the scenery is great, too. Below are five of the best trains to ride.
