In this episode of Talking Business, Shelly Peterson - Founder and CEO of Promoting Me, LLC. and Holly Hansen - Community Development Director for the City of Cloquet  are talking about the Hidden Gem of Pine Valley 360. Of all the parks within the City of Cloquet, the vast natural area of Pine Valley Park is the crown jewel. Situated on top of unique geological features, Pine Valley is the largest of Cloquet’s parks, covering approximately 240 acres. 

 Pine Valley is maintained by the City of Cloquet Parks Department and has a multi-use trail system for cross country skiing during the winter season and hiking and trail running in summer and fall. The ski jumping facility has multiple jumps and hills with a rope tow. The singletrack trail provides opportunities for mountain biking, hiking and running during the summer and fall, plus snowshoeing, hiking, and fat-tire biking in the winter.

Northwest Paper Company donated 40 acres of land in 1960 to the City of Cloquet for the purpose of developing the park for ski jumping and Nordic skiing, which was then a pine plantation with mixed hardwoods throughout its hills and valleys. The natural vegetation and geography would soon become the backdrop for a beautiful ski trail system in the forest and was named Pine Valley Park by Cloquet’s legendary ski coach Joe Nowak in 1961.

The primary purpose headlining the creation of the park was to provide a first-class ski jumping and Nordic ski trail network, sports Cloquet had become renowned for. Throughout its history the park has been supported by a vast network of volunteers who constructed chalets, built the ski jumps and trails, and then maintained the ski jumps and trail network.

The creation of the Nordic skiing and ski jumping park proved to be a successful endeavor, soon playing host to state high school championship ski meets, regional USSA ski races and jumping meets, and the annual City Ski Meet. Pine Valley and Cloquet High School produced 13 Minnesota State Champion High School Ski teams, many individual state champions in Nordic skiing and jumping, plus United States Olympic Team members in Nordic combined, biathlon, and ice hockey. The street into the park is aptly named “Olympic Drive.”

At the entrance into Pine Valley Park is the Pine Valley Ice Arena (Northwoods Credit Union Arena), home to high school hockey programs, the Cloquet youth hockey association, and the Minnesota Wilderness junior league hockey team. While Nordic skiers and ski jumpers had already been active at Pine Valley during the 1960s, a cooperative effort between the skiers and the growing hockey program looking for a place to build an indoor ice rink identified a suitable location at Pine Valley on which to build the new rink. The Pine Valley Ice Arena was built in the late 1960s, using local volunteer labor and funded by grassroots fundraising by the hockey program spearheaded by then head coach Bill Kennedy.

Improvements led by volunteers and City staff included a Nordic trail lighting project in 1998 that resulted in 2.5 kilometers of lighted ski trail. The ski jump landings were re-graded and the start positions at the top of the jumps were modified to accommodate new jumping techniques in 1999.

The most recent addition to Pine Valley is the five-mile singletrack trail that winds through the park. The singletrack trail concept initially came from a group of Nordic skiers who thought the addition of the new trail network would bring more users to the park, particularly during the summer and fall seasons, thereby making Pine Valley more of a year-round center for silent sports.