Minnesota. For a small town they are keeping a great museum in place by documentating and displaying their history. Dedicated to the miners of iron ore, explained how iron ore was mined above ground as well as below ground, how it was gathered, processed and shipped to waiting steel mills on the Great Lakes. It also documented life in Minnesota, all the different ethnic people and how they lived. The Vermilion, Mesabi and Cuyuna iron ranges are the largest deposits of iron ore in the world. And the connection to Cleveland. LTV Steel (my former employer) owned a number of mines in this area, having it shipped through Duluth's harbor into Cleveland. I can only shudder when I remember the Edmund Fitzgerald, the iron ore tanker, that sank at Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula in 1975, loaded with iron ore from the mines heading to Cleveland. Another reference to home - we are camping right near the Mesabi Range and next week we are heading more north east and will be right near the Vermilion Range. How cool is that? Touring the museum was fun. With the big equipment and machines on display, well worth our time.
Fun facts that we have discovered....... The Mesabi Trail is a rail-to-trail 130 miles of biking fun for those enthusiasts. It starts in Grand Rapids and moves north east all the way to Ely. It was once a railroad line for the movement of iron ore. It connects the Mississippi River to the Boundary Waters of the upper North East. Another fact....we crossed over the Mississippi River this morning - not at all the raging wide body you see say in St. Louis. Just a small creek, only about 30 feet wide, very very shallow. The Mississippi River in this part of the country is called the Upper Mississippi where many lakes and small creeks make up the beginnings of the River we know which is 2,320 miles long and is the largest river in North America. We are about 4 miles from Lake Itasca where the Mississippi is formed and begins its flow south.
I had tried to get us a campground in Two Harbors, Minnesota, located about 20 miles north of Duluth on Lake Superior. All booked. I found out today the 3M company started there. You know the company - Post-it-notes, sandpaper, Scotch cellophane tape, Scotch-Brite cleaning supplies, printers, fax machines, medical and dental products, etc. Evenutally it moved to Duluth, then to St. Paul. Certainly has made my life easier. Ah-hah.
As we approached the entrance to the Museum, we noticed that the visitor center looked like a castle. We found out that it was built to represent the symbol of the Army Corps of Engineers, the oldest and largest engineering organization in the United States. During the 1930s when there was no work the City got a huge grant from the government to help develop the town and make jobs and the Corps was instrumental in building up the town - this building, a massive stone fence around the town, sports complex, buildings for the workers, civic buildings and more.
Did you know that Greyhound Bus Line started in the town of Hibbing which is next door to Chisholm? Started out by two guys who started a quick shuttle of miners back and forth between mines and their homes and it became a hit and so did the company. And the last fun fact - and now the WOW factor - while we were visiting the Museum of Mining in Chisholm, the hostess was adamant in telling us that the movie "Field of Dreams" which starred Kevin Costner, was based on the Chisholm's own Doctor Graham. This Archibald "Moonlight" Graham played for the New York Giants in 1922 but never came up to bat. Instead, he gave up baseball and returned to Chisholm and practiced medicine for the next 40 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment