About Local Mining

The discovery of marketable quantities of iron ore on the Vermilion Iron Range in the early 1880's was soon followed by the discovery of the Mesabi Iron Range in 1892. By 1900. Minnesota led the North American iron ore industry, out producing all the other ranges combined. The establishment of a major raw materials industry in a relatively remote region in a short time period gave rise to over 100 town sites and mining locations. Immigrant migrations from Northern and Southern Europe provided the bulk of the labor needed for underground and open pit mining operations. 

Mining, as an extractive industry, is sensitive to national and international economic trends. Minnesota mining operations are part of a highly vertically integrated industry. Natural ore and taconite pellets are mined and manufactured in Minnesota and shipped by rail and ship to steel mills in cities on the lower great lakes and eastern steel mill cities. 

Mining history is cyclical. Economic expansion brings prosperity and mine expansion. Recessions and depressions resulting in decreased demand for raw iron cause production to fall and mines to close. Cost of production is a powerful driving force. Open pit mining of rich direct shipping ore catapulted Minnesota's Mesabi Range to a world leader as cost per ton fell during the early twentieth century. World War II accelerated the exhaustion of many of the natural ore mines causing the industry to turn to the processing of the lower grade, iron-bearing taconite. Taconite mining radically changed the Minnesota mining industry. Instead of many smaller mines and beneficiation plants across the Range, taconite plants required tremendous capital investment in large centrally located (to taconite reserves) processing plants. Instead of shipping ore directly, the hard taconite rock is crushed to a face powder consistency and the iron extracted magnetically. Rolled into marble size pellets, the taconite ore is baked in furnaces and hardened to withstand shipping to the steel mills.