Chisholm,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Chisholm from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The city was named for its founder, Archibald Mark Chisholm (1862–1933), a mining man and investor from Glengarry County, Ontario, Canada. Chisholm was incorporated in 1901. A post office called Chisholm has been in operation since 1901. With a railroad line to Duluth and plenty of mining work available in and near town, Chisholm's population grew rapidly, and by 1908 it had more than 6,000 people and 500 buildings. On September 5, 1908, a fast-moving forest fire obliterated the town due to dry conditions and the wooden construction of nearly all the town's buildings. Many people escaped by going into the lake. No one died in the fire. Afterward, building codes were enhanced, and by the next summer, more than 70 fireproof buildings had been erected.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Chisholm’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewChisholm, Minn., Nov. 5th 1908, t…, 1908: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Chisholm, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Chisholm, Minn., Nov. 5th 1908, taken sixty days after the fire (1908) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Historic places
National Register · via Wikidata
From Wikimedia Commons (2), the Library of Congress (8) and the National Register (2). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.