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Hate and hope on the Iron Range
A century ago, Iron Rangers cheered, fretted and fought the rise of the Ku Klux Klan across the Mesabi. The hate and hope of this time remain with us today. Word of the Klan arrived much earlier. A hit movie, “The Birth of a Nation,’ played in Duluth and Iron Range theaters in 1915 and…
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Iron Range 4th of July returns with gusto in 2021
Today I present one of my favorite annual features at MinnesotaBrown: the annual Fourth of July weekend lineup of Iron Range regional parades, street dances and fireworks displays. I’ve only been posting my newspaper columns this year as I finish my book. But I just had to come out of my book-writing cave to put…
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We all fall down
Masked men pelted cars with rocks. A mob stopped all traffic from entering or leaving the city. An opposing horde accosted people on the street, including women and children. Smoke bloomed on the horizon. “Who started the fires?” “Whose side are they on?” This isn’t Minneapolis in 2020. This was Hibbing in 1916. That summer,…
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Iron Range parades, street dances and fireworks
As a young kid I marched in the Keewatin Fourth of July parade as a patriotic penguin, Donald Duck, and other flag-festooned creatures. As an older kid I remember piling into a car with my friends, touring Range towns for street dances and fireworks. Before cell phones we would often try to anticipate where we…
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Summer 2018 brings color to Range communities
I drive through Nashwauk, Minnesota, most days. It’s a nice little town, but a little worn down. That’s not unusual for the cities of the western Mesabi Iron Range. These boom towns bloomed in a white pine wilderness a century ago, each at the mouth of a specific iron mine. Now that mining is more…
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Mesabi Iron Range takes action on mountain bike trails
Last week brought a very busy Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board meeting. In addition to discussions of reform and school funding, the board also green-lighted the commissioner’s plan to fund three mountain bike trails on the Mesabi Iron Range. The almost $5 million grant package helps volunteer-based organizations and Giants Ridge develop three distinct…
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L.L. Bean ‘Bootmobile’ headed to the Iron Range
Growing up in the rural environs just off the Mesabi iron formation, I became accustomed to the machinations of the bookmobile. Well, now Iron Range residents can expect a new arrival: the Bootmobile. L.L. Bean, purveyor of fine boots and outdoor clothing and accessories, turned a pickup truck into a giant boot. Now they tour…
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A Day in the Life of Biwabik
The Mesabi Iron Range city of Biwabik is making a bid for Minnesota Monthly’s “Best Minnesota Town” next month. Videographer Kim Sampson assembled this short film “A Day in the Life of Biwabik” for the occasion. Several Iron Range photographers contributed their work to the project. I think it’s a rich, sweet visual depiction of…
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New film explores 1916-17 Northern MN labor uprisings
Filmmaker Gary Kaunonen of KCC-TV in International Falls just released a new documentary about a pivotal time in Northern Minnesota’s labor history. It’s called “Northern Minnesota’s Labor Wars.” The years 1916 and 1917 brought major labor uprisings in the mines of the Mesabi Iron Range and the lumber camps of the state’s far northern pine…
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Author to share novel about 1916 Mesabi strike at MDC
Author Megan Marsnik will read from her novel “Under Ground” and discuss its setting amid the Mesabi Range Strike of 1916 Thursday, Feb. 23, at 6 p.m. at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm. The Discovery Center currently features the exhibit “Enough! The 1916 Mesabi Range Strike.” This is an absolutely necessary viewing for anyone…
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Paper shows PolyMet runoff could reach BWCA after all
While the proposed nonferrous Polymet mining project near Hoyt Lakes nears the end of its environmental review process, questions remain about the speed with which it could receive permits. One of the most fascinating developments I’ve seen recently is this Marshall Helmberger story in last week’s edition of the Tower Timberjay. According to a June 18,…
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Laskiainen Finnish Sliding Festival in Palo this weekend
This is an older post about Laskiainen. Click here for the 2016 information. This weekend, Feb. 7-8, the 78th Annual Laskiainen Finnish Sliding Festival will be held near the Loon Lake Community Center in downtown Palo, Minnesota. This annual Iron Range winter tradition originated with Finnish immigrants who settled places like Palo after they were…
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‘A hundred years went by’
Last week the leaves popped and it became summer on the Iron Range. Once again we fly the colors of our flag — birch green, sky blue and iron ore red. Our haunted northern Minnesota spring, which revealed all that the snow had covered, dissolves into a comfortable summer — the woods obscured by woods,…
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Iron Range native wins Pulitzer for cartoons
An Iron Range native just won a Pulitzer Prize. Though I never knew that Kevin Siers, a political cartoonist for the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, was from Biwabik, the Duluth News Tribune‘s Mike Creger apparently did. He filed a fascinating feature on Siers and the Pulitzer Prize for cartooning he won Monday. In his 20s, while doing…
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Golf Channel profiles Iron Range golf courses
The Golf Channel’s Brandon Tucker recently profiled the Mesabi Iron Range and took a closer look at the two big golf courses at Giants Ridge near Biwabik. It’s a mostly-positive review of the Legend and the Quarry golf courses. The signature hole of the entire property — and arguably the entire state — comes courtesy…