The Iron Range: A Mining Heritage

The Minnesota Iron Range, the major US iron-mining region for more than a century, has historically been considered a “mine friendly” area.

Originally, miners seeking gold discovered Minnesota’s iron ore.  Since their aim was gold, the iron was initially ignored, but ironically, the iron became more valuable. After finding the metal on three different ranges at different times beginning in the 1860’s, the area became known collectively as the Iron Range of Minnesota.  Of the Vermilion Range, Mesabi Range (discovered in the 1880s) and Cuyuna Range, the Mesabi is the chief deposit of iron ore in US – 110 miles long between Grand Rapids and Babbitt, and 1 to 3 miles wide.  Its massive size, in fact, leads many Minnesotans to equate it alone with the Iron Range, in exclusion of the smaller ranges.

Mining on the Range began in 1884.  At about the same time, thousands of European immigrants were arriving in America and the mines provided job opportunities.  Towns grew up and by 1900, Minnesota led the North American iron ore industry. 

The softer, high-grade ore first mined occurred both near surface and underground, allowing part of the mining to be conducted in open pits.  The Hull Rust Mahoning Mine in Hibbing is still the world’s largest open pit iron ore mine.  But building weaponry for World War II virtually depleted these direct shipping ores and Iron Range economy was hard hit.

Growth in demand for iron ore and the emergence of new technologies allowed the industry to turn to the processing of lower-grade, iron-bearing taconite.  In the early 1950s, Reserve Mining opened the first taconite mine and by 1956 it had built and incorporated Babbitt, the town closest to the Birch Lake Project.  Taconite changed Minnesota’s mining industry from one of many small mines and plants across the Range, to one of tremendous capital investment in large, centrally located plants for processing taconite into pellets for transport via the Great Lakes to steel mills.  The Iron Range still boasts world’s largest taconite processing plant.

For over century, northeastern Minnesota’s iron ore mining provided thousands of good paying jobs for people directly employed at mines and those employed in satellite industries.

But in the 1980’s, in order to remain competitive in world markets, the taconite industry began to shrink its labor force by investing in larger, more efficient equipment .  Today, taconite mining on the Mesabi Range still contributes $1.5 billion annually to Minnesota’s economy and supports 16,000 Minnesota jobs, including 4,000 miners who earn about $65,000 a year.  But since 2001, some 10,000 mining jobs have been lost, due in part to temporary decreases in the demand for steel, but largely due to technological and equipment capacity improvements that allow fewer miners to do the same amount of work.