Knott’s Landing On Lake Superior

On Friday, January 27, 1871, Kentucky Democratic congressman J. Proctor Knott figured he’d derail a land-grant bill being debated on the House floor with an entertaining speech dripping with sarcasm. For thirty minutes he lampooned the absurdity of approving an expenditure of tax dollars for a god-forsaken, freezing nothing of a town located on the edge of nowhere called Duluth. It worked. The legislation on behalf of the St. Croix and Lake Superior Railroad never made it to a vote. Deader than Julius Caesar.