page_title: Gogebic Range
section_title: Iron boom
hierarchical_section_title: Gogebic Range / Iron boom
caption_attribution_description: English: Plummer Mine Headframe, the last remaining mining headframe in Wisconsin, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 97001141
context_page_description: The Gogebic Range is an elongated area of iron ore deposits located within a range of hills in northern Michigan and Wisconsin just south of Lake Superior. It extends from Lake Namakagon in Wisconsin eastward to Lake Gogebic in Michigan, or almost 80 miles. Though long, it is only about a half mile wide and forms a crescent concave to the southeast. The Gogebic Range includes the communities of Ironwood in Michigan, plus Mellen and Hurley in Wisconsin.
  The name Gogebic is Ojibwa for "where trout rising to the surface make rings in the water." "Range" is the term commonly used for such iron ore areas around Lake Superior. In Wisconsin, the Gogebic Range is often called the Penokee Range. The range is named after Lake Gogebic, a large lake near the east end of the range in Gogebic and Ontonagon Counties in Michigan.
  Located within the southern of two parallel prominent ridges, the Gogebic range iron formation name is often used interchangeably with the range of hills that encompass it. The hills composing the Gogebic range vary from 100 to 600 feet above the surrounding terrain, and are a prominent landform visible for miles.
context_section_description: The iron formation rocks forming the Gogebic Range were created by iron-rich sediments laid down within a shallow sea nearly 2 billion years ago.  Later, the region was uplifted to such an extent that the resulting mountains rivaled the European Alps of today. Later still, around 1 billion years ago, the region was subjected to extensive volcanism associated with the creation of the Midcontinent Rift System, an event that nearly tore the North American Plate in half before mysteriously ending.  The volcanism metamorphosed and modified the rocks to create the iron ores present today. During this geologic activity, the horizontal layers of the iron formation were tipped nearly seventy degrees, such that mines used to extract the ore needed to be extraordinarily deep, extending to over 5,000 feet (1524 m) underground.
  The iron comes from the Huronian Ironwood formation.  It consists of alternating beds of ferruginous oolitic chert and fine-textured cherty carbonates.  Iron minerals make up one third of the formation content, the rest being quartz.  The formation was discovered in 1848 by Dr. A. Randall during the Fourth principal meridian survey near Upson, Wisconsin. Ore was first produced in 1883 from the Colby Mine in Michigan.
  The initial boom in the Gogebic Range came between 1884 and 1886. The discovery of high-grade Bessemer ore on the Gogebic Range and the potential for its exploitation led to a speculative craze the like of which has had no parallel in Michigan or Wisconsin. While it lasted, fortunes were made and lost within a month or even overnight.
  On September 16, 1886, the Chicago Tribune reported: 
  Hundreds of people are arriving daily from all parts of the country and millionaires are being made by the dozens ... The forests have given way to mining camps and towns, and a most bewildering transformation has taken place. In the palmy days of gold mining on the Pacific slope there is no record of anything so wonderful as the Gogebic.
  Thousands of immigrants and their families arrived in the region to work in the mines.  The immigrants were mostly Finnish, Swedish, Italian, French-Canadian, Austrian, and English ethnicities.   Many of the settlers had prior mining experience in their home countries, and were actively recruited by the mining companies in Europe.  The influx of settlers created a population boom in the region, and helped establish numerous communities in the Gogebic Range.
  Iron ore was shipped via rail from the Gogebic Range to the Lake Superior port in Ashland, Wisconsin where it was loaded onto vessels and shipped to various Great Lakes ports throughout the region for further transport or smelting into Steel.
  For decades in the late 19th century and into the 1920s, the Gogebic was one of the nation's chief sources of iron. Iron from the Gogebic helped to fuel the industrial boom in the Upper Midwest during these years. By 1930 mining was winding down in the area. The mines began closing as the national economy suffered from the Great Depression. The result was widespread economic devastation in the communities of the Gogebic Range.
  Some mines continued to operate into the 1960s, but the volume never reached the same levels as in the earlier boom years. A defining event was the last shipment of iron ore in August 1967 to Granite City Steel in Illinois. 
  Approximately 325 million tons of this ore was mined from around 40 individual mines between 1877 and 1967.  Iron mines of the era exploited the "natural" (soft) iron-rich ores in a 15 kilometer-long stretch in the central portion of the range straddling the Michigan-Wisconsin state line.  These mines were mainly of the underground shaft type, which were among the deepest iron mines in the country.  Due to these characteristics, and the greater associated costs involved with extracting the ore, these mines were unable to compete economically with the larger open pit iron mines in northern Minnesota and elsewhere.
caption: Plummer Mine Headframe in Iron County Wisconsin
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