In the News
The Mania is Spreading
Dunedinville. PBS North. (January 1, 2025)
Tag along as we tour a unique Duluth neighborhood light festival.
NPND December Edition 2024. North Pole News Dispatch. (December 21, 2024)
The North Pole News Dispatch is a remote Christmas and Holiday news station located at the North Pole. Ken Smith reports the Christmas and Holiday news as it comes across the festive holiday news wire. You can find a discussion of Dunedinville around the 18:30 mark of this particular episode (although the whole podcast is worth a listen for a leisurely stroll through the holiday season).
Selective Focus: Dunedinville. Perfect Day Duluth (December 16, 2024)
A few families in the Hunters Park neighborhood created Dunedinville during the pandemic when the only way to roam Bentleyville was by car. This past weekend, they gathered for the fifth year in a row, celebrating the holiday season in multiple yards. The gathering has grown since its first iteration and now includes its own website, podcast, origin story, board game, theme songs, live music and a comic book. The celebration is “famous for its killer sled tracks, fueled by in-house ice and snow-making capabilities.” Check out some of their slick slopes, light fixtures and moments from this year.
Community Connection: Troy Abfalter talks about Dunedinville. The North 103.3 FM (December 15, 2022)
Three years ago, in the wake of personal loss and an unrelenting pandemic, Troy Abfalter of Duluth started to envision something better. “I really missed feeling hope and joy," says Abfalter. ”I needed something to tend that light within, so I started building."
The result is Dunedinville, a sprawling light display across Abfalter’s city property that spills into neighbors' yards – neighbors who’ve been very willing to latch onto the project. The main event of the display is a community gathering on the Sunday night prior to the winter solstice. Families can visit and take in various visual spectacles and interactive structures. “We have things like light tunnels, and photo booths, and firepits, hot coco, music, treehouses, gnomes, snow hills, snow forts, and a sled track.”
Abfalter has plans to keep the display going and to make things "crazier and crazier.” But there’s a bigger objective in mind for the future. “What's our vision for Christmas City of the North 2025? Where are we going from here?" Abfalter has a proposal. "One Bentleyville; 100 neighborhood outdoor holiday gatherings... folks out there, I know you probably already have a light display - I've seen it... send out invites to your neighbors, have a party, get together."
So, the call is out there. Duluth is the Christmas City of the North and Abfalter wants to be a part of making it bigger. And he’s pretty sure you do too.
First day of winter and it finally looks like it. WDIO-TV (December 21, 2020)
Thanks to new snow on the first day of winter, it's going to be a white Christmas in the Northland.
Troy Abfalter loves walking through Bentleyville, especially the light tunnels. So he created his own, at Dunedinville 2020. "I think a lot of folks, including me, were looking for something exciting. Something bright, something light. And that's how Dunedinville came about."
He and his girls created a walk through display, which they celebrated on the eve of the winter solstice. "I love winter. We got married in the winter, our first child was born in the winter," he said.
It's named after the street the live on, Dunedin Avenue in Duluth.
Neiva, who will turn 7 in January, loves the snow. She was even named for it. Neiva means "radiant snow."
(Unfortunately the actual tv video link is now inactive. There was fantastic footage of the Wild children.)
