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Stunning video shows new Hwy 53 route
If completed as planned, the Highway 53 relocation project on Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range will be the region’s biggest transportation project for a generation or more. We’ve discussed the project’s pros and cons, its route and how it will affect communities here at MinnesotaBrown, but do we really understand what it will look like? Aerial…
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Status quo wins out at RAMS
The Range Association of Municipalities and Schools (RAMS), source of much controversy earlier this year, held their mail-in election for chairperson of the board. The Mesabi Daily News reports that Silver Bay City Councilor Carlene Perfetto won the election 22-18, defeating Virginia City Councilor Charlie Baribeau, who had called for sweeping reforms of the organization’s…
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Questions linger over Highway 53 plan
Plans to relocate one of the Iron Range’s busiest highways to accommodate a mining company continue to progress, though the Virginia City Council opted to hold off its support, for now, after a recent public forum. The Mesabi Daily News reports that Virginia councilors remain concerned about how the new route of the highway will…
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Great Scott! ‘Doc Brown’ visits Iron Range hot spot
For most in my generation, the actor Christopher Lloyd is best known as the eccentric recluse scientist in the “Back to the Future” movies who sends Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly to the past, the future, the past again, and then finally the present. Today, that present is past, while the previous future is now…
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Cliffs CEO details DRI hopes, swipes at Essar
Cliffs Natural Resources CEO Lourenco Goncalves spoke yesterday morning at the company’s annual community breakfast in Virginia, Minnesota. WDIO was there: To stay strong in the steel industry, the company is very seriously considering making DRI grade pellets, which have a higher iron content. Northshore Mining has already tested this possibility. “We are working on three…
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Public lobbying group that hired Tomassoni now reeling
The controversy over State Sen. David Tomassoni (DFL-Chisholm) accepting a job as head of an Iron Range public sector lobbying group continues to churn, now consuming local politics as well as the crowded halls of the Capitol in St. Paul. As we discussed last week, Ely became the first RAMS member-city to delay renewing its…
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McReynolds-Pellinen named to Virginia City Council
Last night on the east central Mesabi Iron Range, Mary McReynolds-Pellinen was sworn in as a Virginia (Minn.) City Council member. The city council appointed her to fill a seat left vacant when Larry Cuffe was elected mayor in the last election. McReynolds-Pellinen was the fourth highest vote-getter in the at-large council race in that…
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The Iron Range’s Highway 53 paradox
It’s rare to see an issue unify people of different political persuasions, but perhaps even rarer for the reason to be abject bafflement. So it goes for the not-so-small matter of the Highway 53 relocation project on Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range. As we learned late in 2014, the state department of transportation has selected a preferred…
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Paul Metsa to star in musical based on trippy autobiography
One of the more successful musicians to emerge from the Iron Range later in the 20th Century was Paul Metsa, a singer-songwriter who certainly fits in the mold of the Range’s somewhat-more-successful star, Bob Dylan, crossed with a bit of Bruce Springsteen to boot. Metsa, who is from the Range city of Virginia, has lived and…
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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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Celebrate the solstice at Olcott Park Greenhouse
The longest nights of winter will be this weekend, but that doesn’t mean you can’t live it up in a warm tropical environment right here on Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. The Friends of the Greenhouse will be hosting their second annual Celebration of the Winter Solstice this Saturday, Dec. 20, at noon at the Olcott…
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Local, weird, darkly funny: ‘The One Who Watches’
A new short film, “The One Who Watches,” by Duluth filmmakers Nicholas Sunsdahl and Molly Josefson, made the following impressions on me, in this order: 1) the mix of Bemidji, Iron Range and Twin Ports settings and characters, 2) the abject film school weirdness, and 3) the dark, persistent humor, punctuated by one scene that made me laugh…
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UPDATE: MN DOT picks high bridge over mine pit for Hwy 53
Today the Minnesota Department of Transportation recommended its preferred alternative for the Hwy 53 Relocation project. MN-DOT wants the northernmost route, which will build the state’s tallest bridge — 1,100 feet — across the Rouchleau Pit outside Virginia. After hinting it would do so weeks ago, the DOT explains why it selected the northern route: After lengthy study of several…
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Iron Range music teacher profiled on MPR
Minnesota Public Radio will periodically profile the work of music teachers around the state. This week, MPR’s Daniel Nass talked to Virginia High School’s Matthew Krage. Krage reinvigorated the program at this eastern Mesabi Range school and brought back musical theater after a 15 year hiatus. You can read the interview here, or listen below.…
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A dozen Iron Range concerts for price of one
Another season of the Mesaba Concert Association series is upon us. For a $35 membership, you have tickets to five shows at the historic Hibbing High School auditorium and other shows at the beautiful school theaters in Virginia and Ely as well. According to the Mesaba Concert Association, the schedule for this year is as follows:…