Carlton: A County Seat That Had to Wait
Near Duluth, Minnesota
Carlton County was carved out of Pine and Saint Louis counties in eighteen fifty-seven and named for Reuben B. Carlton, a member of the Minnesota Senate in eighteen fifty-seven and eighteen fifty-eight. The county had a county seat in name only for years as settlement trickled in slowly.
The Northern Pacific Railway reached the area, and the junction community was incorporated as Carlton in eighteen eighty-one. The city is the county seat but remains small, a village in the forest corridor south of Duluth near the Jay Cooke State Park and the Saint Louis River gorge. Its neighbor Cloquet, a few miles west, would grow far larger, but Carlton kept the courthouse.
