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The Iron Range is dead; long live the Range
“The king is dead; long live the king.” This saying from the height of European monarchies meant when the person at a nation’s helm physically died, the title lived on with the next person in the royal line. Massive change could be seen as mere progression. This simple continuity kept order even at a time…
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Reeling U.S. Steel asks for relief on state mining leases
Socked by a global iron and steel price collapse, U.S. Steel is asking the state for a reduction in the cost of its state-owned mining leases, which currently fund trusts benefiting Minnesota universities and schools. The company needs to reduce costs by about $25 million to reopen its Iron Range properties. The 114-year-old Pittsburgh-based company announced earlier this…
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Mesabi Nugget stays down; U.S. Steel continues cuts
Business North reports that Steel Dynamics, owner of the Mesabi Nugget plant in Hoyt Lakes, will keep the plant idled as the price of iron remains lower than the cost of production. The idling was announced months ago with the hope that it would end after new equipment was installed during the shutdown. Though the upgrades…
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Iron Range mines must modernize to survive
As the iron mining and steel industries gird for a hard year of low prices and intense international competition, iron mining executives and academics meet in Duluth this week for the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME) Minnesota conference. WDIO reported on the Tuesday keynote by Don Fosnacht, director of the Center for Applied Research and…
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An uncomfortable truth about Iron Range’s mining woes
Here on the Iron Range one cannot escape the talk of impending layoffs at area iron mines. You also can’t mistake who company officials and unions alike blame for this situation: foreign steel dumping. “Dumping” means foreign companies, sometimes as extensions of foreign governments, sell steel for less than it costs to produce, just to move it off their shores. Usually their…
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U.S. Steel to idle Keewatin Taconite, affecting 400 workers
Today, U.S. Steel announced it will idle its Keewatin Taconite mine and processing plant in 90 days. The mine employs more than 400 people and produces about six million tons of taconite pellets annually. With about five million tons stockpiled on the property this shutdown could last several months unless market conditions improve dramatically.…
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Magnetation announces ‘indefinite idle’ of Keewatin plant
After Mesabi Nugget announced a “warm idle” a couple weeks ago, another Iron Range iron ore producer announced an old fashioned “cold idle” today. Magnetation, the scram mining and iron concentrate producer based in Itasca County, announced today it would indefinitely shut down its Plant One facility near Keewatin. The plant, Magnetation’s smallest, will be…
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Rock and a hard place, change coming to the Iron Range
Some of life’s biggest myths are that 30 years is a long time, that today doesn’t matter, and that anything is permanent. Here on Northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range, the lessons of change that come from digging out the ground beneath our very feet have been hard learned. But what’s learned is so easily forgotten after those paltry 30 years.…
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A schoolhouse divided will not stand
Last week, the Nashwauk-Keewatin School Board voted to dissolve its shared services agreement with the Greenway School District on the western Mesabi Iron Range. Days later Greenway also backed away from most elements of the partnership. This marks the end of an experiment exposing many hard truths about the future of school and community collaboration on the Iron Range.…
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Essar claims financing; Magnetation rolls pellets
It’s been a big week of economic news on the western Mesabi Iron Range. Late last week, Magnetation LLC, announced it was producing taconite pellets at its Indiana processing plant using iron ore concentrate recovered from Itasca County pits. “This first production marks another significant milestone in Magnetation’s history,” said Larry Lehtinen, CEO of Magnetation.…
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U.S. Steel cancels KeeTac expansion plan
Business North reports that U.S. Steel announced several strategic decisions today, one of which was to cancel expansion plans at Keewatin Taconite on the Mesabi Iron Range. From the story: U. S. Steel executives said they considered its future raw materials needs for iron ore and coke, and found its current production capability sufficient. The…
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Range students build working hovercraft
Students in an engineering class at Nashwauk-Keewatin High School recently demonstrated their year-end project: a working hovercraft that can fly over water, snow and land. WDIO has the story, and video: The hovercraft uses a snowmobile engine and is built from a design the students drafted in class. Related posts: No related posts.
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2016 promises expansion of Cross-Range Expressway
Over the years I’ve written a great deal about the cross-Range expressway, a vision of a four-lane highway that spans the entirety of the Mesabi Iron Range. It was the furtive promise of highway officials back during the Lyndon Johnson Administration, largely unrealized because of massive funding and land-rights issues. In summary: it’s hard to…
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Minnesota DNR maps help explore state with new eyes
The above image was created with a maps feature from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources web site. You can use data to create all kinds of different maps. This is the Mesabi Iron Range, as seen from the air in 2010. Naturally, I spent my time on the site checking out places around the Iron…
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Saturday rigatoni feed to help my aunt beat cancer
My aunt Cheryl Johnson from Keewatin is the kind of person who quietly takes care of everyone around her and never expects or receives much in return. Though she never married, she is the person her five sisters and many, many nieces and nephews have counted on for last minute care, rides, help and support.…