A New Window on the Range

As the taconite industry faces hard times, the Range plays up its heritage.

By Margaret A. Haapoja

When I bought my sister an Authentic Iron Ore Wear T-shirt at Hill Annex Mine State Park last summer, I wondered what my mother would have thought. For 30-some years she scrubbed and bleached, trying in vain to get the rusty stain out of my dad's work T-shirts. Toiling in the Hill Annex Mine from the age of 15 when he cared for the mules, my father retired after nearly 50 years in that pit.

Advertising their ore-dyed shirts as mementos of northeastern Minnesota, Mark and Joni Kragness of MaJon Sportswear Inc. say, "Iron ore's distinctive hue colors the land, lakes and this shirt."

That they could even sell such a shirt reveals that the Mesabi Range of today is a much different place from what it was in the 1950s. Back then, that rust was more than color--it was the region's lifeblood, a shade that pervaded every community.

As I gaze into the deserted pit of the Hill Annex Mine, I can almost hear the familiar sounds of my childhood. Sharp whistles signaled an imminent blast of dynamite or the loading of ore into railroad cars. A high-pitched whine issued from tightening cables as the shovel bucket dug into the bank. And always there was the chatter of vibrating screens, the rumble of crude ore tumbling down chutes at the loading pocket, and the pounding of the churn drills.

Now, where all was once motion and noise, all is silent and still. Birches and pines blanket the sides of the red earth pit. A pair of ospreys nests at the top of an osprey nesting pole rising from the water in the pit.

Soon, the Mesabi Trail, a 132-mile path linking Grand Rapids to Ely, will bring bicyclists right to the mine overlook. From Marble to Calumet, riders will travel on an old haulage road, once used to transfer mining machinery from one end of the range to the other. From Calumet the bicycle trail will run along the abandoned Duluth Mesabi & Iron Range Railway grade, where mammoth steam locomotives known as Mallets whistled and wheezed every day of my childhood.

Where is the Iron Range of my youth--the close-knit neighborhoods, the chain of immigrant communities each with its own distinct personality, the bustling mining region with its boom-and-bust cycles that bound its people together? It's still there. In 2000, seven iron ore producers employed 5,720 workers and turned out nearly 43 million tons of taconite pellets. Mines have modernized, reinventing themselves to adapt to an ever-changing steel industry pressured by foreign competition. As plants close and unemployment threatens again, the Range is trading on its heritage and turning to tourism.

To reacquaint myself with my changing childhood home, I traveled the Iron Range visiting familiar haunts and discovering new attractions.

Ethnic Tapestry

Mechanical sounds aren't the only ones missing from the modern Range. A cacophony of different dialects mingled in our small town as I was growing up. The Crottiers had a soda fountain back then, and I loved the exotic tones of Mrs. Crottier's French accent. Within two blocks of our house lived the Bulgarian Erkeneffs, Scandinavian Johnsons and Carlmans, Italian Corteses, Serbian Lynchs, Jewish Jaffes, Finnish Makis, and German Raffaufs. Most Range communities were tapestries woven from a mixture of nationalities.

Today there's no better place to learn about the Range's legacy than Ironworld Discovery Center in Chisholm. Interactive exhibits in this mining museum, perched on the edge of an abandoned mine pit, include everything from the early geology of the region to the story of taconite. Wall-sized pictures show the men and women from 43 nations who transformed a dense wilderness into an industrial society in less than 100 years.

The walls of a simulated underground mine resulted from molds made in the Soudan Mine. Life-size figures gather around a card table for a lively game of smear in the saloon. A wooden side-dump ore car stands next to a slide show on the history of open-pit mining. A 1928 electric trolley, like those that once shuttled passengers between Gilbert and Hibbing, travels across the Glen-Godfrey Mine, passing a display of mining equipment and stopping at a 1915-era railroad depot near the Glen Location (Range talk for a tiny community). Costumed guides reenact life in an immigrant miner's home.

I listened to tape recordings of Nobby Valeri talking about his gardens in Poole Location near Hibbing, Harvey Richart reminiscing about his experiences in the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1936, and Tom Hiltunen remembering his childhood on the family homestead near Brimson.

Every summer during Ironworld's Ethnic Days, Rangers celebrate their heritage through song, dance, food, and crafts. One Sunday in July, my husband and I attended Festival Finlandia. Hundreds of people wandered the flower-lined walkways, and polka music filled the air. We watched Paivi Homola teaching her 12-year-old daughter the intricate art of bobbin-lace making, which she herself had learned as a third-grader in Finland. And we saw Mary Erickson, who is apprenticing under Ladies of the Kaleva in Virginia, construct a himmeli, a Finnish straw ornament that resembles an elaborate hanging mobile. We sampled squares of squeaky cheese and kropsua, or Finnish oven pancake.

Woodland Finns

No immigrants were more at home in the north woods than the Finns, who were drawn to jobs in a landscape reminiscent of their motherland.

Many Finns settled around Embarrass and erected hand-hewn homes and farm buildings. Their craftsmanship is preserved in the 14 buildings on the Finnish Heritage Homestead Tour. The silver patina of age rests lightly on the historic Finnish log structures, which testify to the tenacity of these pioneers who settled the area between 1890 and 1930. In fact, sisu is a Finnish word once defined by local resident Bill Seitaniemi as "stubbornness beyond reason." The cold, which helped preserve the log structures, is a source of pride to local residents. A tourist brochure claims the title of nation's cold spot with an officially recorded temperature of minus 57 F in January 1996.

The area's 165 log buildings, which ethnic historian Alan Pape referred to as "diamonds in the fields," became the basis for Embarrass' selection as one of America's 16 Uncommon Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1987. The structures represent one of this country's most conspicuous collections of log buildings associated with a single ethnic group.

"The Finnish log techniques are the finest we have," says Minnesota Historical Society architect Charles W. Nelson. "The way the log is hewn to be virtually like a timber and then fit together in such a tight fit that you can put one layer of cloth between two logs and make it weathertight--that's exemplary."

I especially admired the Nelimark sauna because Finnish steam baths have been such an integral part of my life. According to Embarrass resident Margaret Kinnunen, the sauna was a birth-to-death necessity for the Finnish settlers, used because of its warmth for bathing, giving birth, doing laundry, treating the sick, and preparing the dead for burial.

Both my husband and I have taken saunas all our lives. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of Saturday nights--sauna nights--at my aunt and uncle's cabin on Swan Lake. Our family joined friends and relatives there, and we took turns bathing and visiting over coffee and cake.

Room and Board

Just outside Embarrass, a Finn named John Kangas ran a boardinghouse for a dozen men back in 1910. Local legend says his spirit still hovers over his farm. Today the Kangas house is the Finnish Heritage Homestead Bed & Breakfast, where we stayed overnight and enjoyed Buzz and Elaine Schultz's hospitality. I can't imagine Grandma serving such an elegant breakfast of blueberry-stuffed French toast and yogurt topped with fresh raspberries. But their vintage wood cookstove, hutches full of heirloom dishes, and crazy quilts brought back a flood of memories.

During the 1920s and '30s, my grandfather was village policeman in Calumet, and Grandma ran a boardinghouse. Grandpa put up beaverboard partitions in the garage, moved in some beds, and boarded four single men who worked in the Hill Annex Mine. For a dollar a day, Grandma fed them, washed their clothes, and packed their lunch pails. The food was simple but substantial fare--meat and potatoes, homemade bread, rice pudding, rhubarb sauce, and lots of big molasses and sugar cookies. My aunt, who was 4 or 5 at the time, remembers that her brother would put a dish in the middle of the dining room table, and the men would drop nickels and dimes in it for her.

Rasta Pasta

Stopping in Gilbert for a bite to eat last year, we were surprised when a black man with a broad smile and a lilting island accent greeted us at our table. Toney and Jo Pat Curtis run the Whistling Bird restaurant.

"It was the town's first hotel," said longtime Ranger Jo Pat. "And it was a cathouse for many years. Italian has always been very popular on the Iron Range, so it used to be called Little Italy. When we bought it, there was a room all encased in glass where people could watch them making pasta with big pasta-making machines from Italy."

Jo Pat met Toney, a native Jamaican, on a trip 15 years ago to Negril, near Montego Bay. They married and converted Little Italy into the Iron Range's first and only Jamaican restaurant, with dishes such as Flame-Grilled Jerked Shrimp and Rasta Pasta, and tropical drinks such as the Pickled Parrot, Blue Jamaican, and Mango Bango. Reggae music plays, tropical birds perch here and there, and paintings of colorful island scenes hang on bright orange and turquoise walls. The Caribbean cuisine is a far cry from the pasties and "South America" sandwiches (a spicy blend of canned meats and vegetables heated and spread on thick slices of Italian bread) that miners carried in their lunch pails long ago.

Digging Into the Past

Perhaps there is no better way to picture the past and understand the present of the Iron Range mining industry than to stand at the edge of an open pit and stare into its depths. And there is no wider manmade crater on the Range than the Hull-Rust Mahoning north of Hibbing. This gaping hole stretches 3 miles across and reaches a depth of about 535 feet, embracing more than 50 individual mines that opened between 1895 and 1957. Hibbing Taconite Co. mines taconite in the Hull-Rust Mahoning pit today.

From atop the edge of the pit, 240-ton haulage trucks look like Matchbox toys. Rows of retired mining machinery line the far hillside. Not far from the overlook, old-fashioned street lights, crumbling foundations, and partially paved avenues mark the site of Old Hibbing, a community whose buildings were mounted on steel wheels and moved two miles south from 1918 through 1958 so the ore beneath them could be mined.

With inactive machinery still in place, the Hill Annex Mine offers visitors an opportunity to contemplate past and present. Dressed in ore-stained overalls and an engineer's cap just like my dad used to wear, third-generation miner Dave Lotti led our two-hour bus tour. His lively commentary taught me more about iron mining than I ever knew--fossils from the Coleraine Cretaceous formation, the difference between "merch" and "wash" ore, and the women who worked at the Hill Annex during World War II. Climbing aboard a 1952 Marion electric shovel and 40-ton Euclid truck brought back memories of my dad's years in the mine.

Fishing

Some day the Hill Annex might be stocked with lake and rainbow trout for angling, as has already been done with several abandoned open-pit mines such as the pit lake near Coleraine.

When you go in there, it's like fishing in the Grand Canyon," Ray Svatos, director of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Mineland Reclamation, had told me. Svatos has collaborated with the Department of Natural Resources on stocking fish in pit lakes for the past 15 years. "These lakes are very deep, and they're probably the most pristine, clean water that we have in the whole state."

For the first time this season, the Hill Annex will offer interpretive boat tours in the pit lake. "That mine pit is basically a cutaway version of the earth," Jim Willford, DNR regional state parks manager, said. "It will be much easier to tell the story of the geological history by having people down in that environment."

Lotti shifted the bus into low gear to climb to the top of a tall lean-ore dump, where he claimed we could see for nearly 23 miles. Looking down on the town of Calumet, I spotted the house where I grew up. Our tour nearly over, I glanced at the little girl in the seat across the aisle as we returned to the visitor center. She was about 8, the age I was when Calumet was a thriving mining community. I realized pictures of miners in their ore-stained overalls didn't flash across her mind. Sounds of steam locomotives, banging shovel buckets, and foreign dialects didn't echo in her memory. Her understanding of the Mesabi Iron Range's open-pit mining era will come from this glimpse of the Hill Annex Mine.

Margaret A. Haapoja is a free-lance writer who lives on Sand Lake, south of Calumet.