[3] A suburb of Duluth, it was at one point the county's only city to grow in population, as much of the area's residential and commercial expansion occurred there.

The eastern part of Hermantown has an appearance typical of a lower-density bedroom community, with large, leafy lots and occasional subdivisions.

The western part of Hermantown is more rural, reminiscent of the city's past agricultural focus.

They lived in the area often called in early Duluth references "the land up over the hill."

In 1867, August Kohlts and his friend Lambert "Pat" Acker filed for homesteads in Section 18, Township 50 North, Range 15 West.

Acker arrived at about age five with his parents and siblings around 1835 and settled in Erie County, New York.

The Kohltses and Ackers resided in the town of Tonawanda on the Niagara River for some years with many other German settlers in the area.

Soon afterward, the Kohlts and Acker families set out from Buffalo, New York, heading west via the Great Lakes for the Hancock, Michigan, area of the Keweenaw Peninsula and its copper mines.

Perhaps lured by the availability of free land under the Homestead Act, the Kohlts family left for Minnesota.

[5] In the years that followed, Kohlts and Acker alternated between working in Duluth and clearing land at their rural homesteads on what is now Five Corners Road in Hermantown.

They traveled between Duluth and their homesteads on a Native American trail that later became Piedmont Avenue and the Hermantown Road.

Hermantown's population got a boost from a new wave of homesteaders just before World War II.

During the Great Depression, the federal government built nearly a hundred "subsistence homestead" projects designed to move people trapped in poverty in the cities to new homes in rural or suburban locations.

The idea was that the family would be able to raise its own food and use the profits from selling any surplus to work off its debt to the government.

The units were sold to homesteaders on very liberal terms: the average price for the home and property was $2,687.40 plus interest.

Now with 84 homes and families concentrated in one part of the community, the Project marked the start of Hermantown's transition from rural to suburban.

Kingsbury Creek briefly enters the south-central part of the city near Ugstad Road.

The Pike Lake Business District of Canosia Township is immediately northwest of the city.