USA > Minnesota > St Louis County > Duluth > Duluth and St. Louis County, Minnesota; their story and people; an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, educational, civic and social development, Volume II > Part 5
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Penobscot Mine .- The Penobscot Mine was explored in the middle nineties, by Cheeseboro, of Duluth, and shipments began in 1897, Eddy Brothers and Company being then in control. It was an underground mine, and very wet. In fact, it had the reputation of being "the wettest in the Lake Superior Region, the inflow of water being about 5,000 gallons a minute." The superintendent was John A. Redfern. In 1901, the property passed to the Oliver Iron Mining Company, previous shipments having been 127,204 tons. Between 1903 and 1918, the mine did not yield a thousand tons, but 32,531
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tons came from it in 1919. There is an available deposit of about eight million tons.
Agnew Mine .- The Agnew Mine was explored by W. C. Agnew and associates in 1901. The property was eventually leased to the Great Northern and passed to the Deering Harvester Company, which later became the International Harvester Company. That corpora- tion still operates it, B. W. Batchelder being general superintendent of its Mesabi properties, and Martin Trewhella, captain at the Agnew. Shipments began in 1902, 45,582 tons. Total shipments to end of 1919 are 1,907,238 tons. About two and a half million tons are still available.
There is also the Agnew No. 2 Reserve, and the No. 3 Reserve, with deposits of about eleven million tons, in all, but these belong to the Oliver Iron Mining Company.
Albany Mine .-- The Albany Mine was explored in 1901 by A. M. Chisholm, D. C. Rood, and A. Maitland, who leased it to Pickands, Mather and Company, who have controlled it ever since. It was operated by two methods, underground and open-pit, and first entered the shipping list in 1903, with 109,608 tons. Robert Murray has been identified, as superintendent and general superintendent, with Pick- ands, Mather operations in the Hibbing District since the early days. The Albany to end of 1919 yielded 4,831,974 tons, and there is still about as much available.
Cyprus Mine .- The Cyprus Mine was one of the discoveries of WV. C. Agnew. He found it in 1901, and soon afterwards leased it to Joseph Sellwood and Pickands, Mather and Company. First ore shipped was in 1903, 121,818 tons. Total shipped to end of 1919, 1,780,986 tons. But the statistics show that only a further 50,000 tons are available. The mine was an open-pit from the beginning. It has reverted to the Sellwood interests again.
Forest .- The Forest was one of the mines of the Hibbing Dis- trict in the first years of this century. It was explored by M. L. Fay, in 1902, and developed "as an open-pit milling proposition" by the Tesora Mining Company. The first shipment was in 1904, and the last in 1910. Total quantity shipped, 248,540 tons. Fee-owner is the Mississippi Land Company.
Laura Mine .- The Laura Mine was explored by the Fay Explora- tion Company, in 1901. The company sank a shaft, and began to ship ore in 1902, first year's shipment being 16,453 tons. In 1903 the lease was transferred to the Winifred Iron Mining Company. Eventually it passed to the Inland Steel Company, which corpora- tion has operated the mine for many years. William Wearne, gen- eral superintendent, has been with the company since the beginning of their operations on the Mesabi Range. The ore from the Laura Mine, went, mainly. to the company's furnaces and steel mill at In- diana Harbor, near Chicago. The mine has yielded about an equal quantity yearly since 1906, and the total of shipments to end of 1919 is 2,548,300 tons, with about 2,000,000 tons still available.
Leetonia Mine .- The Leetonia Mine was discovered in 1900, by George H. Warren and associates. It was developed as an open-pit by Joseph Sellwood, the first shipment coming in 1902, 28,784 tons. There was a heavy overburden, and by 1909 more than 2,000,000 yards of overburden had been removed. Indeed, in some parts of the mine, it seemed more practicable to mine by underground methods. The property was acquired by the Inter-State Iron Company, and. although latterly it has been operated by the Leetonia Mining Com- pany, both are subsidiaries of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Com-
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pany, which corporation has controlled the property since 1905. In the fall of 1908 a shaft was sunk, and at that time an incline slope was also in operation. An electric hoist was installed, and the Lee- tonia was the first Mesabi mine at which that method of mining was instituted. E. S. Tillinghast has been the superintendent at the Leetonia since 1905. The total quantity mined to the end of 1919 was 6,924,545 tons, and there is still a deposit of about two million tons available.
Longyear Mine .- The Longyear is another of the Mesabi prop- erties of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, and Mr. Tillinghast is superintendent of that mine also. It was discovered in 1901 by E. J. Longyear. The lease was assigned by him to the Columbia Mining Company, who transferred it to the Williams Ore Company, and that company sold it to the Inter-State Iron Company, present operators. It was developed as an underground mine. and the first shipment was made in 1902, when 22,788 tons were mined. From 1905 the mine has been dormant, with the exception of the year 1913, when 11,799 tons were shipped. The total quantity mined to the present is only 133.190 tons, but it is a good property, having about 5,218,420 tons available. The Longyear Reserve Mine, from which nothing has yet been mined, also has about 2,000,000 tons available.
Morris Mine .- There are three Morris Mines. They all belong to the Oliver Iron Mining Company, and all are in sections 31 and 32 of township 58-20. The Morris Mine was discovered by Duluth min- ing men in 1902, and soon afterwards leased to the Oliver Company. From the outset, the Morris was destined to be one of the big mines of the Mesabi. Its first year's shipment was the record for an open- ing year, being 1,070,937 tons in 1905. The next two years averaged almost two million tons, and altogether, the Morris Mines have yielded, to the end of 1919, 14,949.021 tons, and the available quantity is still about 20,000.000 tons. There was very little stripping neces- sary at that mine.
Nassau Mine .- The Nassau Mine was discovered by E. J. Long- year. It was leased to the Rhodes Mining Company, and later to the Nassau Ore Company, a subsidiary of the Pittsburg Iron Ore Com- pany, which was organized in 1905. Capt. Alfred Martin was the superintendent. A shaft was sunk, and shipments began in 1907. The mine, however, only yielded 71,563 tons to the end of 1919, though there is a deposit of more than 3,300.000 tons proved. The property has passed to the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company.
Pillsbury .- The discovery of the Pillsbury Mine was one of the first E. J. Longyear made, on behalf of J. S. Pillsbury. The mine came into the shipping list in 1898. Eventually it passed to the Oliver Iron Mining Company. It had vielded 206.178 tons by 1900, and to the end of 1908. 1,640.265 tons. Since that year it has been idle.
Scranton Mine .- The Scranton Mine is one of the large mining properties of the Hibbing District, although, up to the present, it has only yielded 520.673 tons of its deposit of more than eighteen million tons. It was discovered in 1902, by A. M. Chisholm and associates, and as an underground mine was at first known as the Elizabeth. It was disposed of to the Lackawanna Steel Company, under which company the first shipment was made in 1904. 1.168 tons, the ore being hauled in wagons to Hibbing and there shipped in that year, "in order to comply with conditions of state lease." The mine has remained in the control of the Pickands Mather interests ever since, although nothing was mined between the years 1904 and 1910, and nothing has come from it since 1915.
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Stevenson Mine .- The Stevenson Mine was discovered by E. J. Longyear in 1894, and leased eventually to the Stevenson Iron Mining Company, which seems to have been a company formed by Corrigan McKinney and Company. It is said that the mine "was named for Stevenson Burke, who was prominently identified with Corrigan McKinney and Company." At the outset, mining was by shaft, and the first year of shipment was in 1901, 56,031 tons. However, it was soon decided to strip the heavy overburden, and that work was begun in 1901. A review of Mesabi mining in 1902 stated that the Stevenson was "the largest thus far opened on the western end of the Mesabi Range." Mining operations at the Stevenson were then "carried on with steam shovels, there being three of them on ore bodies, besides two working on stripping." The property then was under the supervision of Amos Shephard, and the mining captain was Frank McCreary. Several million yards of surface were removed, and "the immense pit opened" was "one of the largest and most note- worthy of any on the Range, being one mile in length, while the extreme width is 800 feet." It is now very deep. Water became one of the main obstacles to mining, and in 1906 and 1907 shafts were sunk, primarily to drain the water, but incidentally to mine. One of the features of the mine was a suspension bridge, 815 feet long, to span the open-pit gully, and to provide means of getting from the location and offices to the shafts. G. E. Harrison was the superin- tendent from 1904 until the property passed, a few years ago, to the McKinney Steel Company, E. D. McNeil being now the general su- perintendent, and E. L. Cochran, superintendent. Altogether, to the end of 1919, the Stevenson Mine has given 13,945,402 tons, but its available deposits seem now to be very little.
Susquehanna Mine .- The first attempt to develop the Susque- hanna mine was made in 1900 by E. Dessau, of New York. He failed and abandoned the lease. The property eventually passed to the Great Northern Railway Company, and was sub-leased by that cor- poration to the Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company. The mine was opened in 1906, and is one of the "big holes" that hem Hibbing in. The shipment in 1906 was 20,984 tons. Up to end of 1919 the mine yielded 6,324,358 tons. But the hole will be much bigger and deeper before the deposit has been exhausted, for there is still an ore body of about eighteen million tons to mine. The early superintendent was Bert Angst, and A. E. Wilson is now general superintendent. The property is now in the control of the Rogers-Brown Iron Com- pany, a Chicago promotion.
Sweeney .- The Sweeney Mine was discovered by E. F. Sweeney and J. B. Adams. Leased to the Denora Mining Company, and later absorbed by the Oliver Iron Mining Company. The property has a deposit of about 1,800.000 tons, but has only yielded about 8,000 tons. It is interesting in one respect, in that "it has a very light surface" and should have been one of the first discovered, the ore being "but a few inches" below the surface in places, and located "on the old Grand Rapids road" which was travelled over for years by mining men without being suspected." It was not discovered until 1901.
Utica Mine .- The Utica mine is a Pickands Mather property, and it has yielded, to end of 1919, 3,999,524 tons. It was explored in 1900 by Thomas J. Jones and others, and leased to Pickands Mather. Under Robert Murray it was developed as an open-pit and as an underground mine, first shipment being made in 1902, 9,009 tons. There is an available deposit of about 2,700,000 tons.
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Webb Mine .- The Webb mine was explored by P. H. Nelson in 1901. An underground mine was developed by the Shenango Ore Company, but shipments did not begin until 1905. D. C. Peacock was superintendent. Up to the end of 1919, the total quantity shipped was 1,524,746 tons. The mine still belongs to the same people, the Shenango Furnace Co., E. J. Maney being manager, and HI. S. Rankin superintendent. It is a valuable property, having almost ten million tons of ore still available.
Great Northern Iron Ore Properties .- When the United States Steel Corporation was organized in 1901, "panic seized owners of mining property." They felt that they had lost their ore market. It is said that "one could have bought the whole of the Mesabi range (that lay outside the Oliver Iron Mining enclosure) for little more than the Dutch gave for Manhattan Island." But there were some independent operators and financiers who were more courageous. A few, who saw further, gathered up handfuls of these begging prop- erties, and it "was not long before there began the first era of lasting prosperity the range had known." Independent steel manufacturers were in the market for ore, and the demand expanded amazingly.
The history of the Mesabi range indicates that "it has afflicted with additional wealth men already laboring under great fortunes." Lumbermen who bought these lands for a trifling price, for the timber only, found themselves "besieged by promoters who pleaded for leave to pay them a million or so for their discard. Rockefeller loaned a million and was recompensed by fifty. Carnegie, yielding to Oliver's entreaties, to buy something that cost him not a penny, was thereby master of the situation. James J. Hill bought a second-hand logging road to oblige a friend, and was introduced to an estate on which he once placed a value of eight-hundred million dollars."
Hill, it seems, was indifferent to ore until almost forced into it, by the Wright-Davis logging railroad purchase, by which, figuring haphazardly, he knew to be worth $60,000,000, in ore values. But soon he took up the ore matter deliberately, and to the surprise of the steel men gathered in all the "odds and ends" they had passed by, and made the "odds and ends" into the "enormous assembly of ore" the Great Northern properties represent. In a few years, his holdings became almost as enormous as those of the Steel Corporation, which could not permit him to have such a weapon of raw material to "hold over their heads." To keep the supremacy for the Steel Corporation, to maintain a safe base in raw materials, the United States Steel Corporation were forced to come to James J. Hill eventually, and pay him a larger royalty than had ever been paid on Mesabi ore. The matter is dealt with in the general Mesabi Range chapter, of this work.
Going back to the beginning, A. W. Wright and C. H. Davis, of Saginaw, and John Killoren and M. H. Kelly, of Duluth, acquired at the early land sales about six thousand acres of timber land, much of it along the Mesabi range. They built a logging road from Swan River into the heart of their land, which was near Hibbing, and commenced logging. The Weyerhaeusers were their best customers, and eventually the Wright and Davis syndicate offered them what timber they had remaining, with the land as well, for a million and a half. The Weyerhaeusers thought it better to take the timber for $1,300,000, and leave the land in the possession of Wright and Davis. Cut-over land was then worth from $2 to $5 an acre, where settle- ment was possible. That on 6,000 acres did not represent much, and
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taxes were a small but certain liability. Still, cut-over land "beyond the pale of civilization" was not worth having. So the great timber barons took only the timber, forming a company to handle the logs. Wright and Davis still had the land, which they looked upon as a "white elephant," and even though there were certain discoveries of iron made, they could not get anyone to "nibble" at their holding when offered for $3.00 an acre. So they held it, having no option. A few years later the Mahoning mine was developed on their land ; then the Stevenson. In 1899, James J. Hill paid them $4,000,000 for their land, and their railway.
He was quite satisfied with the transaction, knowing its poten- tialities, yet it does not seem that he was over-anxious to enter into mining operations himself. And had it not been for the formation of the huge steel corporation in 1901, and the consequent "flurry" among independent mining companies of the Mesabi range, it is doubtful whether he would have invested further in ore lands, even with a legitimate accessory, a railway. But when the deflation came, he saw his opportunity and bought Mesabi ore properties courageously, being quite content to hold them until the great steel corporation came to him, as has been elsewhere stated. The astounding leasing contract made by Hill with Judge Gary of the Steel Corporation in 1907, held until 1915, and while he drew enormous royalties during that period, incidentally, the steel corporation developed some im- portant properties for Mr. Hill, leaving him much richer in mines when the contract terminated than he had been when it began.
That is the history of Hibbing mining in general, and it is a sufficiently sensational story to be fiction instead of fact.
Many of the important mines of the Great Northern have within recent years been taken over (on a royalty basis of course) by the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, which has been operating on the Mesabi range since 1903, and in recent years has been finding em- ployment for about 900 men. In 1919, a subsidiary corporation, the Mesabi Cliffs Iron Mining Company, was organized, to operate the leases from the Great Northern, the properties including the Boeing mine at Hibbing, the Hill and Trumbull mines at Marble, and the North Star at Taconite. The Boeing mine is being opened as an open-pit and milling proposition, and the Winston Deere Company began stripping operations in 1920. Previously, in September, 1919, the Mesaba Cliffs Company had begun to sink a shaft, for under- ground development of the property. The Hill and Trumbull mines, which adjoin, are to be operated as an open pit, though until taken over by the Mesaba Iron Mining Company no stripping had been attempted on the Trumbull. The Hill was one of the properties developed by the Steel Corporation during the leasing. The North Star was also opened by the Oliver Company. Altogether, James J. Hill did quite well by his introduction to the Mesabi range, through the initial transaction with the Saginaw lumbermen, Wright and Davis.
There are one or two other Hibbing properties worthy of men- tion, among them : the Kerr, which included the Sheridan, discovered by James Sheridan, in 1894, and now one of the Oliver properties ; the Morton, a Pickands Mather mine; the Philbin, operated by the Oliver Company ; and some inactive mines. But page space is un- fortunately not unlimited, and more space has already been given to the recording of the important Hibbing mining history than had been originally planned.
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MUNICIPAL HISTORY
When men first were drawn to township 57-20, they were at- tracted by possibilities in lumber. Some men saw only lumber : nothing else meant "bread and butter" to them. Such a cruiser must have been John Day, who, according to a well-authenticated story, published in the "St. Paul's Despatch," May 20, 1918, stood upon the site of Hibbing many years before it was settled, and actually knew that there was iron in the immediate vicinity-knew it without being in any way excited by the knowledge. The story is :
Twenty-five or more years ago, John Day, a land cruiser for the lum- bering interests, stopped one evening, near sundown, to get his bearings. The country was new to him, and to his companion. Neither had ever been in that section of Minnesota before.
They decided to take their bearings, and so unslung their compass. But the instrument was crazy; the needle danced this way and that. It whirled round and round. It refused to perform its proper duties as a compass. Wonderstruck, Day and his companion, carefully moved the instrument to another place. But still it danced and whirled, and whirled and danced. Never in his long life as a cruiser had old man Day experienced a similar phenomenon. The two men cast anxious looks at each other, and then at the sun, which was rapidly sinking in the west. Here they were, lost in the great north woods, with a crazy compass.
Old man Day cursed softly to himself, and slowly scratching his head boxed the compass.
"Son" he said, turning a sorrowful face to his companion. "We camp right here. Build a fire."
He sat down on a log, lit his pipe and smoked for a while in silence. Then:
"Son, I reckon I've got it. There's iron round about here somewhere, and some day some tenderfoot is going to find it. But that ain't your business nor mine just now, and I don't reckon it'll be of any use in your time or mine, anyhow; so, after we've had a bite, we'll turn in and get away from here to- morrow."
And so they camped that night less than a mile from the mouth of the great Mahoning open-pit mine, which, until the past few years, was the greatest ore-producing property in the world.
Today, on the spot where old man Day stood, in impenetrable wilderness, stands the city of Hibbing.
Day was not the only man who, in the eighties, knew that there was iron along the Mesabi range. But there was little activity in logging, or in mining exploration, until Longyear cut a road "west- ward as far as Nashwauk," in 1891. The Wright and Davis logging operations had been proceeding since the late eighties slowly north- ward along their logging railroad, which started "at what was called Mississippi Landing, across from the old Duluth and Winnipeg rail- road at Swan River Junction, eight miles east of the Mississippi." The railroad, however, did not reach the vicinity of Hibbing until 1894, according to Joseph Moran, who was a cruiser for the Wright and Davis syndicate at the time. And there was probably very little logging done until the railroad was near, whereas hot-footed on the heels of Longyear came mining explorers, in 1891. So that after the "tote" road had been cut through (and one seems to have been cut through all the way from Mountain Iron, where mining explorations were feverishly pursued at that time) there seems little doubt that logging became of secondary importance, excepting to the lumber- men. It interested the mining men only so far as logging was necessary to clear the timber from the land they wished to explore and develop. Yet, while mining was the direct and lumbering the inci- dental activity in the first years of Hibbing, the place was to an extent a lumber camp for some time after Frank Hibbing began to explore for iron, late in 1891, or early in 1892. Soon, the Hibbing
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district had many little exploration camps, and with the coming and going of interested mining men, a central community, not very regu- larly delineated, came into evidence in the vicinity of the spot later chosen by the Hibbing townsite projectors. The community, with- out legal authority, came to be known as "Superior," because of Frank Hibbing's first find, the Superior mine, presumably.
The original landowners of the site of Hibbing are stated to have been Martin B. Hull, Rudolph Ostman and Marshall Alworth. All were purchasers of timber land in the range townships in 1882, al- though in 1892 M. H. Alworth was also identified with Frank Hib- bing and A. J. Trimble in mining explorations. The land had be- come so potentially valuable in minerals by the time Hibbing and Trimble thought of platting a townsite that it was impossible for them to purchase outright the land they wanted for townsite pur- poses. They had to be content with a leasehold, and so it happened that the village of Hibbing eventually was termed, "The Town on Wheels," and ultimately was destined to be actually raised onto wheels and transported to a new site, two miles or so distant, the land upon which it had rested and developed for a generation being especially important to, and needed by, the landlord and mining com- pany, seeing that for a depth of two or three hundred feet the town- site was all iron ore, of high grade, probably a hundred million tons of it.
Platting the Townsite .- The original townsite of Hibbing was platted by H. L. Chapin, a civil engineer, in the spring of 1893, for Frank Hibbing and A. J. Trimble, leaseholders. The original plat embraced, according to the subsequent petition for incorporation, "Lot five (5), and the se. qr. of ne. qr. of section 6, in township 57 n., range 20 w." The plat was "designated as the town of Hibbing" and "on the fifth day of June, 1893, duly approved and certified by the Plat Commission of * * St. Louis County," and "on the sixth * day of June, 1893, duly filed in the office of the Register of Deeds * * in Book F. of plats."
Conditions at that Time .- C. M. Atkinson, editor of the "Mesaba Ore," wrote in 1902 some interesting "Early Day History of Hib- bing," gathering his material, in part, from John B. Conner, a pioneer settler. He begins :
From the time Mr. Longyear completed the connecting link of the road in from Swan River, there were comings and goings and, with the announce. ment of the discovery of iron ore, many people came in here with the intention of remaining with the new camp. New mining camps had sprung up all along the range, and many of them had been seriously overdone, and the overflow, looking for a new world to conquer, came here. Some of the early travelers are here yet, and mighty good citizens they are too. After a time a considerable "town" of shacks and tents came up, from no one knew where, and the little settlement in the wilderness was known as "Superior."
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