Oklahoma man’s swim from Twin Cities to New Orleans grabbed headlines in 1930

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Oklahoman Fred Newton swims down the Mississippi River near Inver Grove Heights on his way to New Orleans from the Ford Dam in this July 1930 clipping from the St. Paul Dispatch. (Pioneer Press files)

The Mississippi River runs 1,826 miles between the Ford Dam in the Twin Cities and New Orleans.

In 1930, Fred Newton swam every single one of them.

A 27-year-old sign painter from Clinton, Okla., Newton guessed the endeavor would take him about three months. And —  maybe — bring him fame and fortune.

“I just picked myself a nice cool job for the summer,” Newton told the St. Paul Dispatch on July 7, the day after he began his swim. “I’m in the water from six to eight hours a day and I’ve put on a tan most folks would envy.”

He made it to New Orleans nearly six months later, on Dec. 29, having endured cold and current — even floating rafts of manure and offal as he passed the South St. Paul stockyards.

He did set a distance record for open-water swimming, but fame and fortune proved elusive.

“Not much came out of it,” said Worth Sparkman, a Clinton native who first learned about Newton’s swim during the COVID-19 pandemic from a brief article in Smithsonian Magazine.

“I thought, ‘I didn’t know anything about that, and I lived there most of my life,’ ” he said. “I Googled (Newton) and there really wasn’t a lot out there.”

Now a reporter for Axios Northwest Arkansas based in Fayetteville, Sparkman is working on a book about Newton and his under-appreciated exploits.

A cross-country swim

It wasn’t unreasonable for Newton to imagine that swimming the length of the Mississippi might make him rich and famous in 1930, Sparkman said. The previous decade had seen America’s ascendant mass media fuel a flurry of headline-grabbing stunts.

Daredevils seeking an early version of viral fame tested their mettle by sitting atop flagpoles for days at a time, going over Niagara Falls in a barrel or walking on the wings of airplanes in flight.

Promoters of the nation’s new interstate highway system sought to capitalize on this trend in the late 1920s, organizing a cross-country foot race along Route 66 dubbed the “Bunion Derby,” which boasted a $25,000 prize — nearly $470,000 in today’s dollars.

Seen in a postcard image, Oklahoman Fred Newton stands next to an automobile with his ambitious goal painted on the door — swimming the Mississippi River from the Twin Cities to New Orleans — in the summer of 1930. (Courtesy of Worth Sparkman)

The race passed right through Clinton, where Newton earned a living painting signs for local businesses.

“He was an artist,” his son Phil said. “He could stand on the inside of a window and paint a sign on it that you could read from the outside.”

While Newton was tempted by the Bunion Derby’s $25,000 purse, his knees had been damaged by an amateur football career, said Sparkman, who has read Newton’s unpublished memoir in the course of his research.

So he devised an alternative: Newton would swim across the country — albeit north-to-south — via the Mississippi River.

“He says in his manuscript that he hoped to earn fame and fortune,” Sparkman said.

Newton enlisted the help of his younger brother and a friend, who agreed to follow along behind him in a rowboat with food and other supplies.

The trio spent three weeks camped on Lake Minnetonka, where Newton trained with two long swims each day in June 1930, according to a report in the Clinton Daily News. They hoped to be in New Orleans by the beginning of October.

‘The timing was unfortunate’

Newton’s epic swim started small on July 6. Entering the water on the Minneapolis side of the Ford Dam, he swam only as far as Union Depot in St. Paul, where local reporters caught wind of this aquatic curiosity.

The Dispatch reported that Newton ate just two meals a day, supplementing his diet with candy handed to him by his companions in the rowboat.

Newton told the newspaper that although he had been vaccinated against all manner of river-borne diseases, he still had one fear as he headed south.

“I’ve had all these serums, but there’s nothing a man can do for an alligator bite that I know of,” Newton told the newspaper.

As he departed the Twin Cities on his second day in the water, Newton encountered a very different obstacle. Refuse from South St. Paul’s stockyards and slaughterhouses flowed directly into the Mississippi, creating rafts of manure and animal remains.

“There were enough islands of this that birds were actually alighting on them and eating the refuse,” Sparkman said.

Newton made it all the way to Hastings that day, but that pace was difficult to maintain. It took him more than 170 days to reach New Orleans, where the water temperature of the Mississippi dips into the low 50s by late December, according to the National Weather Service.

Newton was greeted by a supportive crowd and newsreel cameras as he emerged from the water covered in a thick layer of grease to insulate him from the cold.

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The publicity generated by his success resulted in a series of exhibition swims and speaking engagements, but the Great Depression kept potential financial backers on the sidelines.

“The timing was unfortunate for him,” Sparkman said. “If he had been able to do it in ’29, he might have been better funded.”

It was at one of his exhibition swims in Arkansas that Newton met his future wife. The couple eventually settled with their family in Gainesville, Texas, where Newton went into the insurance business. He died in 1992 at age 89.

“We moved to a little lake outside of town,” Phil Newton said. “He would still swim into his 70s and 80s. Not too much.”

Today in History: July 6, Althea Gibson wins Wimbledon

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Today is Sunday, July 6, the 187th day of 2024. There are 178 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On July 6, 1957, Althea Gibson became the first Black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title as she defeated fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3, 6-2.

Also on this date:

In 1483, England’s King Richard III was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

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In 1777, during the American Revolution, British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga (ty-kahn-dur-OH’-gah).

In 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur tested an anti-rabies vaccine on 9-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by an infected dog; the boy did not develop rabies.

In 1933, the first All-Star baseball game was played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park; the American League defeated the National League 4-2 behind winning pitcher Lefty Gomez of the New York Yankees.

In 1942, Anne Frank, her parents and sister entered a “secret annex” in an Amsterdam building where they were later joined by four other people; they hid from Nazi occupiers for two years before being discovered and arrested.

In 1944, an estimated 168 people died in a fire that broke out during a performance in the main tent of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1945, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order establishing the Medal of Freedom.

In 1967, Nigerian forces invade the Republic of Biafra, sparking the Nigerian Civil War.

In 1988, 167 North Sea oil workers were killed when explosions and fires destroyed a drilling platform.

In 2013, an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 from Seoul, South Korea, crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport, killing three passengers and injuring 181.

In 2016, Philando Castile, a Black elementary school cafeteria worker, was killed during a traffic stop in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, by Officer Jeronimo Yanez. (Yanez was later acquitted on a charge of second-degree manslaughter.)

In 2018, six followers of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult were hanged along with its leader, Shoko Asahara; they had been convicted of crimes including a 1995 sarin gas attack that killed 13 people and made thousands of others sick on the Tokyo subway system.

In 2020, the Trump administration formally notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization; President Donald Trump had criticized the WHO’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. (The pullout was later halted by President Joseph Biden’s administration.)

Today’s Birthdays:

The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is 90.
Singer Gene Chandler (“Duke of Earl”) is 88.
Country singer Jeannie Seely is 85.
Actor Burt Ward (TV: “Batman”) is 80.
Former President George W. Bush is 79.
Actor-director Sylvester Stallone is 79.
Actor Geoffrey Rush is 74.
Retired MLB All-Star Willie Randolph is 71.
Former first daughter Susan Ford Bales is 68.
Actor-writer Jennifer Saunders (“Absolutely Fabulous”) is 67.
Actor Brian Posehn is 59.
Political reporter/moderator John Dickerson is 57.
Rapper Inspectah Deck (Wu-Tang Clan) is 55.
Rapper 50 Cent is 50.
Actors Tia and Tamera Mowry (MOHR’-ee) are 47.
Comedian-actor Kevin Hart is 46.
Actor Eva Green is 45.
San Diego Padres infielder Manny Machado is 33.
NBA power forward Zion Williamson is 25.

Two Harbor lighthouse regains its ‘iconic beam’

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It wasn’t just fireworks lighting up the night sky in Two Harbors, Minn., this Fourth of July.

For the first time in six years, the iconic light from the North Shore city’s lighthouse beacon 25 miles northeast of Duluth will once again sweep across Lake Superior.

The lighthouse’s light went dark in November 2019 due to a hardware failure. With help from the U.S. Coast Guard, four volunteer lighthouse keepers with the Lake County Historical Society — which owns the lighthouse— installed a temporary beacon so the facility could continue to operate as a private aid to navigation on the lake.

But it’s a flashing light, “that detracts a little bit from that iconic beacon that you see sweeping across Agate Bay,” said Ellen Lynch, executive director of the historical society.

So the organization began fundraising to purchase a new light. It raised $50,000 and bought an LED beacon from a Finnish company that mimics the rotational sweeping pattern of the original lighthouse.

And now the Lake County Historical Society planned to light the new beacon on July 4 as part of a celebration marking the 100th anniversary of the organization, just before the Independence Day fireworks show.

“This has been a long journey for us — from fundraising to installation — and we’re incredibly proud of what our community has accomplished,” said Sam Gangi, president of the historical society board.

The Two Harbors lighthouse is the oldest continuously operating light on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was built in 1893 (17 years before the more well-known Split Rock Lighthouse was completed) to guide ships into the iron ore docks that were built in Agate Bay a decade earlier.

The Historical Society took ownership of the structure in 1999. It operates a museum and bed-and-breakfast, and is also responsible to the U.S. Coast Guard for keeping it lit as a “private aid to navigation.” And now that light will look much like it did over a century ago.

“The new beacon will bring back that iconic sweep and signature of our original light and be as close as possible to the original,” Lynch said.

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Napheesa Collier scores 22 to lead Lynx over Valkyries 82-71

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Napheesa Collier scored 22 points and the Minnesota Lynx topped the Golden State Valkyries 82-71 on Saturday night.

The Valkyrie took a 56-54 lead in the middle of the third quarter with a 10-0 run that started with a pair of 3-pointers by Tiffany Hayes but the Lynx closed with a 15-4 run to take a 69-60 lead into the fourth quarter.

Minnesota pushed the lead to 78-63 on Kayla McBride’s 3-pointer with 4:16 to play.

Courtney Williams scored 15 points for the Lynx (16-2) and McBride added 12.

Hayes had a season-high 23 points for Golden State (9-8), which had won two straight and four of five. Kayla Thornton scored 13 points, but only two after the first quarter. Stephanie Talbot added 10.

Minnesota shot 53% and put together a 14-0 run to take a 25-18 lead after one quarter. The Valkyrie made two early 3-pointers but missed their next eight.

Collier had six straight Lynx points early in the second quarter for a 10-point lead and hit a 3 with 2:46 to go until halftime for a 41-31 lead. Monique Billings scored the next five points for the Valkyries to make it 41-36 at the break.

Up next

The Valkyries play the second of four road games Monday at Atlanta. The Lynx host Chicago on Sunday.

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