Mesabi Range
The Mesabi Range , also known as the Mesabi Iron Range , is an extensive deposit of iron ore and the largest of the four iron ore deposits in Minnesota , known collectively as the Iron Range . Their high grade ore contains up to 70% iron, making the range the leading iron ore deposit in the United States . "Mesabi" is an Ojibwa name and means "giant".
location
The Mesabi Range is an iron ore belt 110 miles (about 170 km) long, an average of 1 to 3 miles wide, with a thickness of 500 feet (150 m) in places. Much of it lies in Itasca Counties and St. Louis Counties . Nearby are the cities of Grand Rapids , Hibbing , Virginia and Babbit, Minnesota . It is an extensive hill country .
Emergence
Much of the iron ore found on Earth today, including that of the Mesabi Iron Range, was formed during the Middle Precambrian . The iron expulsion from hot springs in the sea and the erosion on land caused iron to accumulate in the sea water and accumulate in the sediment through precipitation and deposition . Seaweed was involved in this process . The iron is contained in the taconite , which is mined in the Mesabi Range, in fine layers, similar to the iron ores of the banded iron ores (Banded Iron Formation, BIF).
history
The iron ore deposit was discovered by Leonidas Merritt and his brothers in 1887, which they began to mine in their Mountain Iron Mine in 1892 . The deposit was intensively exploited in the first half of the 20th century. Many of the great industrial barons, including John D. Rockefeller , James J. Hill , Andrew Carnegie and JP Morgan, were involved here at some point and eventually sold most of their businesses to US Steel . The mining activities had decreased in the 1970s, but have been ramped up again since 2005, which is due to increased demand from China and the favorable exchange rates of the dollar against other currencies for exporters . Taconite production in particular is profitable again, with the result that some already closed mines have been reopened and existing mines have been enlarged. The Hill-Annex Mine State Park offers sightseeing tours for guests to learn about the history of mining and the work in the open pit. These tours are led by former miners .
Mining
Most of the iron ore lies close to the surface and is now extracted in open-cast mining , while at the beginning it was also extracted underground in mines. The mined ore is mainly transported with the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway to the ports of Two Harbors and Duluth . In Two Harbors, the ore is ground and shaped into pellets before it is transported across Lake Superior . In Duluth, the ore trains, consisting of up to eighty 100-ton wagons, are driven on massive piers to the “Lakers”, large cargo ships that transport the ore to the ironworks of Indiana and Ohio for further processing .
Weathering and loosening processes make it easier to mine the ore near the surface, making it possible to mine it in open-cast mines. The largest of these, and the largest open pit iron ore mine in the world, is the Hull-Rust-Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine in Hibbing. Abandoned open-cast mines that are no longer in operation are a familiar sight in the iron ore belt. The surroundings of some open-cast mines were rededicated for other uses, such as residential areas for lower and middle income groups.
Popular culture
The film Kaltes Land takes place in the Mesabi Range. It tells the story of the Lois E. Jenson case against Eveleth Taconite Co. , one of the first sexual harassment lawsuits brought by female miners against the Eveleth Taconite Co. mining company in 1984 and which was ruled in their favor in 1998.
Robert Allen Zimmerman, known as Bob Dylan , grew up in the Mesabi Range.
literature
- Charles Kenneth Leith : The Mesabi Iron-bearing District of Minnesota. United States Geological Survey Monograph 43, 1903.316 pp.
- Richard Hudelson (Author), Carl Ross (Author): By the Ore Docks: A Working People's History of Duluth. Published by University of Minnesota Press 2006. ISBN 978-0816646371
- Frank A. King: The Missabe Road: The Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage Books) Publisher: University of Minnesota Press 2003. ISBN 978-0816640836
- David Allan Walker: Iron Frontier: The Discovery and Early Development of Minnesota's Three Ranges. Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society 2004. ISBN 978-0873514910
Individual evidence
- ↑ Duluth News Tribune ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The Mesabi - Kemosabi
- ^ Macalester College - Iron Range. ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. History of mining in the Iron Range
