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The term Iron Range refers collectively or individually to a number of elongated iron-ore mining districts around
Lake Superior Lake Superior in central North America is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface areaThe Caspian Sea is the largest lake, but is saline, not freshwater. and the third-largest by volume, holding 10% of the world's surface fresh w ...
in the United States and Canada. Much of the ore-bearing region lies alongside the range of granite hills formed by the Giants Range
batholith A batholith () is a large mass of intrusive igneous rock (also called plutonic rock), larger than in area, that forms from cooled magma deep in Earth's crust. Batholiths are almost always made mostly of felsic or intermediate rock types, su ...
. These
chert Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a ...
y iron ore deposits are
Precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of th ...
in the Vermilion Range and middle Precambrian in the Mesabi and Cuyuna ranges, all in
Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the List of U.S. states and territories by population, 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minne ...
. The Gogebic Range in
Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
and the Marquette Iron Range and Menominee Range in
Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...
have similar characteristics and are of similar age. Natural ores and concentrates were produced from 1848 until the mid-1950s, when taconites and jaspers were concentrated and pelletized, and started to become the major source of iron production. The mining districts are in Minnesota's Arrowhead region. The region's far eastern area, containing the Duluth Complex along the shore of Lake Superior, and the far northern area, along the Canada–U.S. border, are not associated with iron ore mining, but deposits of copper, nickel, and cobalt at the northern boundary of the Duluth Complex, where it meets the iron formations, are being considered for mining.


The Iron Range and its economy

From a geological perspective, Minnesota's Iron Range includes these four major iron deposits: * Mesabi Range, the largest iron range, largely within Itasca and Saint Louis counties; * Vermilion Range, northeast of the Mesabi, in Saint Louis and Lake counties; * Gunflint Range, in the extreme northern portion of Cook County and extending into
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...
; and *
Cuyuna Range The Cuyuna Range is an inactive iron range to the southwest of the Mesabi Range, largely within Crow Wing County, Minnesota. It lies along a line between Brainerd, Minnesota, and Aitkin, Minnesota. The width ranges from 1 to 10 miles (1.6 t ...
, southwest of the Mesabi, largely within
Crow Wing County Crow Wing County is a county in the East Central part of the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 66,123. Its county seat is Brainerd. The county was formed in 1857, and was organized in 1870. Crow Wing County i ...
. Within Minnesota, "The Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation is a State Department, established by the legislature of 1941 to render public service through research and the actual development of all the state's resources both natural and human." The Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB), known as "the I-triple-R-B" or Iron Range Resources, is an economic development agency funded partly by state taxes on taconite-producing companies and charged with creating jobs. There have been attempts to expand mining to new parts of the Iron Range, most notably with the Twin Metals mine, but these have received pushback from the federal government and environmentalists because of environmental concerns resulting from their proximity to national protected lands.


History

Geologically, the Mesabi, Gunflint, and Cuyuna Ranges in Minnesota belong to the Paleoproterozoic Animikie Group, while the Vermilion Range is Neoarchean. The geologic history of the formations containing iron are typical of
banded iron formation Banded iron formations (also known as banded ironstone formations or BIFs) are distinctive units of sedimentary rock consisting of alternating layers of iron oxides and iron-poor chert. They can be up to several hundred meters in thickness a ...
s worldwide. Before the 19th century, Native American groups mined native copper on the Keweenaw Peninsula.
William Austin Burt William Austin Burt (June 13, 1792 – August 18, 1858) was an American scientist, inventor, legislator, millwright, justice of the peace, school inspector, postmaster, judge, builder, businessman, surveyor and soldier. He first was a builder ...
discovered iron ore in the Marquette Range near Negaunee, Michigan in 1844. Iron ore was discovered on the Menominee Range in 1867 and on the Gogebic Range in 1884. It was first discovered in Minnesota on the Vermilion Range in 1885, the Mesabi Range in 1890, and the Cuyuna Range in 1903. Underground mines were developed to remove the valuable ore of most ranges. But on the Mesabi and Cuyuna Ranges, iron mining operations evolved into enormous open pit mines, where steamshovels and other industrial machines could remove massive amounts of ore. "Large-scale commercial production of magnetite taconite ore on the Mesabi Range started in 1956 at the Peter Mitchell Mine near Babbitt, Minnesota."


Cities and towns

The Iron Range contains cities and towns. Some of the more significant communities in the region include: A large part of the Iron Range is also included in the Duluth MN-WI MSA. * Aitkin (pop. 2,165) is on the
Cuyuna Range The Cuyuna Range is an inactive iron range to the southwest of the Mesabi Range, largely within Crow Wing County, Minnesota. It lies along a line between Brainerd, Minnesota, and Aitkin, Minnesota. The width ranges from 1 to 10 miles (1.6 t ...
's eastern edge. *
Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...
(pop. 1,853) is on the Eastern Mesabi Range. The former St. James, Meadow, Miller and Stephens mines lie within the city limits. * Babbitt (pop. 1,475) * Biwabik (pop. 969) * Bovey (pop. 804) is along
U.S. Highway 169 U.S. Route 169 (US 169) is a north-south U.S highway that currently runs for 966 miles (1,555 km) from the city of Virginia, Minnesota to Tulsa, Oklahoma at Memorial Drive. Route description Oklahoma US 169 is a major north–south ...
between Coleraine and Taconite. * Buhl (pop. 1,000) is along U.S. Highway 169 between Chisholm and
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...
. * Chisholm (pop. 4,976) is the Mesabi Range's geographic center. * Coleraine (pop. 1,970) has been called the "start place of the Iron Range." * Crosby (pop. 2,386) is an old mining
boomtown A boomtown is a community that undergoes sudden and rapid population and economic growth, or that is started from scratch. The growth is normally attributed to the nearby discovery of a precious resource such as gold, silver, or oil, although ...
on the Iron Range's southwestern edge. * Deerwood (pop. 529) Mining engineer Cuyler Adams discovered the Cuyuna Range near Deerwood in 1895. *
Ely Ely or ELY may refer to: Places Ireland * Éile, a medieval kingdom commonly anglicised Ely * Ely Place, Dublin, a street United Kingdom * Ely, Cambridgeshire, a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, England ** Ely Cathedral ** Ely Rural District, a ...
(pop. 3,460), in the Vermillion Range, is perhaps best known as the most popular entry point for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. * Eveleth (pop. 3,718) Home of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame * Grand Rapids (pop. 10,869) is named for the local rapids in the
Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it ...
. *
Gilbert Gilbert may refer to: People and fictional characters *Gilbert (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters *Gilbert (surname), including a list of people Places Australia * Gilbert River (Queensland) * Gilbert River (South A ...
(pop. 1,799) is the location of
Lake Ore-be-gone Lake Ore-be-gone is a artificial lake, formed by the flooding of three open-pit iron ore mines, within the city limits of Gilbert, Minnesota, US. Since the flooding of the mining pits, the area around the lake has been subject to land reclamat ...
, an artificial lake created by flooding three open-pit iron ore mines. * Hibbing (pop. 16,361) is the largest city by area in the state of Minnesota. It is home to the Hull–Rust–Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine, one of the world's largest open pit iron mines. * Hoyt Lakes (pop. 1,888) is in the eastern Mesabi Range. Erie Mining Company previously mined ore and testing to mine new minerals is ongoing. * Keewatin (pop. 1,068) is between Nashwauk and Hibbing. It is home to U.S. Steel's KeeTac taconite mining and processing plant. *
Kinney Kinney may mean: People * Abbot Kinney, a developer and conservationist *Antoinette Kinney, a Utah state senator * Asa Kinney, American pioneer and politician * Bob Kinney, an American professional basketball player * Charles Kinney, an Ohio polit ...
(pop. 169) is an old mining boomtown on the Iron Range, between Buhl and
Mountain Iron Mountain Iron is a city in Saint Louis County, Minnesota, United States, in the heart of the Mesabi Range. The population was 2,878 at the 2020 census. U.S. Highway 169 serves as a main route in Mountain Iron. The city's motto is " Taconite ...
. *
Mountain Iron Mountain Iron is a city in Saint Louis County, Minnesota, United States, in the heart of the Mesabi Range. The population was 2,878 at the 2020 census. U.S. Highway 169 serves as a main route in Mountain Iron. The city's motto is " Taconite ...
(pop. 2,869) is home to Minntac, the world's largest taconite processing plant. * Nashwauk (pop. 983) is a small town between Grand Rapids and Hibbing, 4 miles from Keewatin. * Soudan is an unincorporated community in Breitung Township, Saint Louis County immediately east of the city of
Tower A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures. Towers are specifi ...
on Minn.Highway 169 / Minn.Highway 1. It is the home of the
Soudan Underground Mine State Park The Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park is a Minnesota state park at the site of the Soudan Underground Mine, on the south shore of Lake Vermilion, in the Vermilion Range (Minnesota). The mine is known as Minnesota's oldest, deepes ...
, which contained the University of Minnesota's Soudan Underground Laboratory, which housed detectors, including MINOS, over 700 meters below the earth's surface. * Taconite (pop. 360), named after the taconite pellets from iron ore, was a town many miners lived in. *
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...
(pop. 8,712) is next to the Rouchleau mine pit, which is nearly three miles long, half a mile wide and 450 feet deep. The state's tallest bridge crosses the pit. * Winton (pop 172). Once several times larger than Ely, Winton sits just 3 miles north of Ely, and was once home to a very large lumber mill and a lumber boomtown. Outside communities important to the Iron Range: * Duluth (pop. 86,265) The fourth largest city in the state, is a destination for much of the ore shipped via the DM&IR railroad and loaded onto Lake freighters. * Grand Marais (pop. 1,351) The area was a bustling fur trading station since the 1700s, and the French voyageurs called the settled village Grand Marais ("Great Marsh"), referring to a marsh that in early fur-trading times was 20 acres (8.1 ha) or less in area, nearly at the level of Lake Superior, and situated at the head of the little bay and harbor that led to the settlement of the village. The town comprises much of the Gunflint Trail, which extends to the former
Paulson Mine The Paulson Mine is a former iron ore mine located in Cook County, Minnesota, United States, 53 kilometres north-west of Grand Marais, Minnesota near the end of the historic Gunflint Trail. The Port Arthur, Duluth and Western Railway was built to ...
site. * Silver Bay (pop 1,857) is home to the plant that processes taconite from Babbitt. * Two Harbors (pop. 3,745) is the county seat of Lake County, along the shore of Lake Superior. The town was historically an important port for loading and shipping iron ore from the Range.


Culture

Immigrants from over 23 countries settled the area, drawn to the mining industry. By 1910 the Finns were the largest immigrant group, followed by Slovenes and Croats from the Austrian Empire, and Italians and Swedes. Over time the area developed a strong "Ranger" culture and accent. This northern Minnesota
accent Accent may refer to: Speech and language * Accent (sociolinguistics), way of pronunciation particular to a speaker or group of speakers * Accent (phonetics), prominence given to a particular syllable in a word, or a word in a phrase ** Pitch ac ...
is still present in the area, especially among older people; hence the popular nickname "da Range".
Ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two o ...
is a predominant sport in the region, which has produced several
NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
players as well as all three members of the "
Iron line Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...
" from the 1980 U.S.A. Hockey Miracle on Ice team. In 2022, a documentary focusing on high school hockey in the Iron Range was released. The regional culture is strongly linked to former periods of steady, usually well-paid mining employment, although in recent decades, the region's outdoor recreation and relative remoteness has attracted new residents unconnected to the industry. There are tensions between supporters and detractors of mining, especially over the potential reuse of ironworks to exploit copper ores.
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
, who grew up in Hibbing, memorialized the Iron Range in the 1963 song " North Country Blues", a lament portraying hard times in the region. Presented in his 1964 album '' The Times They Are a-Changin''', it includes such lines as: :''So the mining gates locked and the red iron rotted'' :''And the room smelled heavy from drinking'' :''When the sad, silent song made the hour twice as long :''As I waited for the sun to go sinking'' The Iron Range is known for Cornish pasties stuffed with a combination of ground beef and pork, rutabaga, onion, carrots, and potatoes. Pasties were an easy lunch for those working deep in the iron mines. Slovenian and
Croatian Croatian may refer to: * Croatia *Croatian language *Croatian people *Croatians (demonym) See also * * * Croatan (disambiguation) * Croatia (disambiguation) * Croatoan (disambiguation) * Hrvatski (disambiguation) * Hrvatsko (disambiguation) * S ...
immigrants brought the honey-nut bread
potica Slovenian potica ( sl, Slovenska potica) is a nut roll and a traditional festive pastry from Slovenia. The name of potica is distinctly Slovenian and developed etymologically from earlier Slovenian forms such as povitica, povtica, potvitsa. Th ...
to the Iron Range; it is still served on Easter and Christmas in northern Minnesota.


Politics

The area has remained a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party stronghold despite its predominantly white and rural population because of its history of a largely unionized workforce in the mining industry, the mainstay of the economy of the Iron Range. In 2004,
John Kerry John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician and diplomat who currently serves as the first United States special presidential envoy for climate. A member of the Forbes family and the Democratic Party (Unite ...
carried most of the
counties A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
in the region by a comfortable margin. This was perhaps aided by George W. Bush calling the area the "Iron Ridge" in a campaign speech.
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
outperformed McCain in 2008, carrying every county in the Range. The area was the largest rural Democratic stronghold in Minnesota outside of the urban centers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 2016,
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of ...
's populist economic policies changed the Range's electoral profile. He won multiple counties, reduced past Democratic winning margins and received endorsements from local Democratic mayors.


Climate

The region is known for harsh winters and pleasant summers. The average year-round temperature is in the 30s °F (between about 2 °C and 4 °C). Temperatures below −40 °F/°C occur somewhere in the region during most winters. The Midwestern Regional Climate Center climate summaries record that
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...
has a mean annual temperature of 38 °F, with an average January low temperature of −6.2 °F (about −21 °C) and July high of 77.4 °F (25 °C). Precipitation there averages 27 in (690 mm) annually and snowfall 53.2 in (135 cm).


See also

* Stromatolite *
Mesaba Railway The Mesaba Railway was the first and only interurban electric transportation system on the Mesabi Range, with its inaugural run on December 25, 1912. The track covered 30.5 miles between Gilbert, Minnesota and Hibbing, Minnesota with 6 cars offe ...


References


External links


Mining Communities in Northeastern Minnesota
with a map




Iron Range Research Center Digital Collection
Minnesota Reflections {{Coord, 47, 27, N, 92, 56, W, region:US_type:landmark, display=title Regions of Minnesota Iron Geography of Aitkin County, Minnesota Geography of Carlton County, Minnesota Geography of Cook County, Minnesota Geography of Itasca County, Minnesota Geography of Koochiching County, Minnesota Geography of Lake County, Minnesota Geography of St. Louis County, Minnesota