I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
June 19, 1996
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
Motorists traveling Highway 2 east of Bemidji to Cass Lake will be glad to know the current phase of construction to increase the highway to four lanes should be completed by the end of September, Transportation Department spokesman Lynn Eaton said.
Eaton, the project's engineer, said the grading of the two new lanes is about 90 percent completed. After the grading is done, the gravel base for the pavement will be placed, he said. Laying the gravel base and pavement will take three to four weeks, according to Eaton.
After the pavement has been laid for the two new lanes, the traffic will be re-routed from the older two lanes so that the finishing touches can be added to those lanes. One hill in particular on the older two lanes needs to be leveled off; some culverts still need work; and the connections to the county roads with the highway need to be finished, he said.
Eaton said the project is right on schedule and should be completed by the end of September as planned. He said the project did get a late start due to the late spring, but it was not as much of a problem as it could have been because most of the construction equipment was left on site from last summer. If the equipment had to be brought in this year, the project would have been behind schedule.
However, even though this phase of the project should be completed this summer, the next phase of construction, to add the new lanes from the entrance of the Potlatch site to Cass Lake, will begin next summer and continue through the following summer.
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