Ghost Towns and Locations of the Mesabi and the Inter-Urban Electric Line

Abstract

Northern Minnesota lay wild and dense for centuries before white man had set foot in it. Early Indians, the Sioux and Chippewas, hunted and fished with leisure and complacency without fear of human enemies. In time, white explorers and missionaries began charting lands along the Mississippi, St. Lawrence, and Pidgeon Rivers. News of the great wealth of Minnesota soon spread. About 1800, white-man began building fur trading posts at such places as Duluth, Pidgeon Falls, and Grand Portage. French lumber barons soon recognized the tremendous fortune in the untouched virgin forests. In the late 1800's, iron bearing rook was discovered in the Tower Soudan region. There was speculation concerning the great wealth that lay beneath Northern Minnesota's topsoil, but all was forgotten in the "gold fever" of 1865 when gold was discovered in the Vermillion Range. The greatest significance of this discovery is the probable hastening of the time when iron mines would be developed bringing up the Vermillion Trail; rugged teamsters singing "cousin jacks," boisterous lumberjacks, hardy cruisers, prospectors, railroad men, old-time politicians, pioneer doctorsp and such mining men as Munro, Longyear, Bennett, Hartley, Alworth, Agnew, and the Merritts. Towns mushroomed overnight populated by people of various nationalities who had come to this country in search of a better life. Some of these towns and cities prospered, others whithered and died, leaving rotting remnants of homes, stores. and stables. The following pages will tell the story of the life and death of some of these mining communities, once known to many but now living only in the memories of a few.