Iron mining in the United States

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Processed taconite pellets as used in the steelmaking industry, with a US quarter (0.96 in./24.3 mm) shown for scale. TaconitePellet.JPG
Processed taconite pellets as used in the steelmaking industry, with a US quarter (0.96 in./24.3 mm) shown for scale.

Iron mining in the United States produced 48 million metric tons of iron ore in 2019. [1] Iron ore was the third-highest-value metal mined in the United States, after gold and copper. [2] Iron ore was mined from nine active mines and three reclamation operations in Michigan, Minnesota, and Utah. Most of the iron ore was mined in northern Minnesota's Mesabi Range. Net exports (exports minus imports) were 3.9 million tons. US iron ore made up 2.5 percent of the total mined worldwide in 2015. Employment as of 2014 was 5,750 in iron mines and iron ore treatment plants. [3]

Contents

US iron ore mining is dominated by the Precambrian banded iron formation deposits around Lake Superior, in Minnesota and Michigan; such deposits were also formerly mined in Wisconsin. For the past 50 years, more than 90 percent of US iron ore production has been mined from the Lake Superior deposits. None of the iron ore now mined in the US is “direct shipping” ore ready to be fed into the iron- and steel-making process. The ore is concentrated to raise the iron content before use. All the iron ore currently mined is from open pits.

Minnesota

The St. Clair backing into the iron ore loading dock at Silver Bay, Minnesota, to take on taconite pellets The St. Clair backing into the iron ore loading dock at Silver Bay, Minnesota, to take on taconite pellets.jpg
The St. Clair backing into the iron ore loading dock at Silver Bay, Minnesota, to take on taconite pellets

Minnesota provides the great bulk of the iron ore mined in the US. Iron ore comes from seven open-pit mines, and two tailings reclamation operations, one in St. Louis County, and one in Itasca County. Three of the mines are operated by Cleveland Cliffs, two by U.S. Steel, and one each by Mesabi Nugget Delaware LLC and Arcelor Mittal S.A. The two reclamation projects are operated by Magnetation, Inc.[ citation needed ]

Michigan

Michigan iron ore came from two active mines on the Marquette Iron Range: the Tilden Mine, and the Empire Mine, both operated by Cleveland-Cliffs. In 2014, the two mines produced 12.1 million tons of pelletized iron ore concentrate. [4] In 2016 the Empire Mine was shut down.

Utah

The only recently operating iron mine in the US outside the Lake Superior area was the Iron Mountain mine, formerly called the Comstock-Mountain Lion mine, west of Cedar City, in Iron County, Utah. The mine shut down in October 2014. [5] Operated by CML Metals, Inc. the mine produced ore with 54% iron. The ore was treated onsite, producing a concentrate containing 65% iron. The concentrate was transported by rail to California, then shipped to China. [6]

History of US iron ore mining

Graph of usable iron ore mined in the United States 1890-2014, data from USGS Useable Iron Ore 1890-2014.png
Graph of usable iron ore mined in the United States 1890–2014, data from USGS

In common with other commodities, the history of iron mining in the United States includes a shift to larger but lower-grade ore deposits, a shift from underground to open-pit mining, and a shift from labor-intensive mining to highly mechanized mining.

Although in 2014, the US mined only 1.8 percent of all iron ore mined worldwide, the US was previously a much larger factor in the world iron ore market. From 1937 through 1953, US iron ore made up more than a third of the world's iron ore production; the proportion of world iron ore mined in the US peaked in 1945 at 56 percent.

Colonial

Iron mining in the United States began in 1608, when a ship returning from the Jamestown Colony in Virginia carried a load of iron ore back to England. The manufacturing of iron from ore likely began in 1622, in what is now Chesterfield County, Virginia, but was halted when American Indians killed everyone in the establishment. John Winthrop, Jr. established an iron furnace at Braintree, Massachusetts, which started making iron in 1644, but closed when it ran out of nearby ore in 1647. A more successful effort was established at Saugus, Massachusetts. [7]

Iron production in the 1700s was done with charcoal, of which American forests could provide a seemingly endless supply. Numerous small iron mines supplied iron furnaces scattered throughout the colonies in the 1700s. Bog iron ore common around the Chesapeake Bay fed numerous iron furnaces in Maryland and Virginia set up to export to Britain. [8]

Early republic

Although the bog iron ores mined in colonial days were widespread, the deposits were also small, and quickly exhausted. In the late 1700s the iron furnaces moved away from the bog iron ore of the coastal swamps, to larger iron ore deposits further inland. Inland locations also allowed the furnaces to be closer to sources of limestone, which was used as a flux in iron smelting. The proximity to larger ore deposits favored larger, more permanent iron smelters. [9]

Most US iron mining before 1850 took place in eastern Pennsylvania, New York, and northern New Jersey. [10] New Jersey's principal iron ore district, at Randolph, began mining in 1710. The Cornwall iron mine, the largest iron-producer in Pennsylvania, began mining in 1740. The Adirondack district of New York began mining in 1775. [11]

Starting about 1820, coke from coal replaced charcoal as the fuel and reducing agent in iron furnaces. Coke has a higher crushing strength than charcoal, allowing larger smelting furnaces. [12] Because iron and steel-making at the time consumed more coal than iron ore, the steel mills moved closer to the coal mines to minimize transportation costs. Although later overshadowed by production from the Lake Superior mines, iron ore mining in New Jersey and New York continued until the 1960s. Iron mining in Pennsylvania ended in 1973.

Lake Superior mining

Lake Superior Iron Ranges Iron Ranges.jpg
Lake Superior Iron Ranges

Iron ore was discovered on the Marquette Range in 1844, and mining started in 1848. Mining increased after the opening of the ship canal at Sault Ste. Marie provided cheap water transportation between the iron mines to the lower Great Lakes. The Lake Superior iron deposits were the largest ever discovered in the United States, and by the late 1800s, dominated American iron mining.

The Lake Superior iron ores occur in Precambrian banded iron formation, in long, linear belts called iron ranges. After the Marquette Range in Michigan, iron ore was discovered in the Menominee Range (Michigan) in 1867, the Gogebic Range (Michigan and Wisconsin) in 1884, Vermilion Range (Minnesota) in 1885, Mesabi Range (Minnesota) in 1890, and the Cuyuna Range (Minnesota) in 1903.

Prior to the start of iron mining on the Lake Superior iron ranges, US iron mining was done close to the iron furnaces. The large size of the Lake Superior deposits, and the access to cheap Great Lakes water transportation, enabled iron mining on a massive scale, located far from the iron furnaces. The Lake Superior iron ores, however, are located far from coal deposits, and the greater tonnage of coal required in steelmaking favored the location of furnaces closer to the coal mines. Favorable locations for steelworks using Lake Superior ore included Great Lakes ports such as Chicago, Cleveland, and Gary, as well as cities close to coal and with good water transportation, such as Pittsburgh. Although Lake Superior provides cheap shipping most of the year, from ports such as Duluth and Marquette, shipping by water halts in the winter months, and most ore is stockpiled until shipping resumes in the spring.

In the 1950s, the Lake Superior mines were running out of the high-grade “direct-shipping” ore. Experiments in concentrating the ores had been ongoing since the 1915. In 1954 the hematite ore (jasper, or jaspilite) began to be concentrated, and in 1956, the magnetite ore (taconite) was concentrated on a large scale. The concentrated ore is commonly formed into pellets for ease of handling.

Cliffs Mine on Marquette Range Cliffs Shaft Mine tower.jpg
Cliffs Mine on Marquette Range

Through 1965, the Lake Superior iron ranges had produced 3.66 billion tons of ore, about 70 percent of which came from the Mesabi Range. Totals through 1965 were: [13]

Mesabi Range 2,511 million tons
Marquette Range 339 million tons
Gogebic Range 323 million tons
Menominee Range 290 million tons
Vermilion Range 102 million tons
Cuyuna Range 100 million tons

Birmingham, Alabama

The largest production of US iron ore outside the Great Lakes districts was the Birmingham, Alabama district. Sedimentary iron ore in the Red Mountain formation of Silurian age was first used to make iron in 1864. Production was small until 1881, when major steelmaking began in Birmingham. [14]

The last iron mine shut down in 1975, after the district had produced 376 million long tons of ore. [15]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iron ore</span> Ore rich in iron or the element Fe

Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the form of magnetite (Fe
3
O
4
, 72.4% Fe), hematite (Fe
2
O
3
, 69.9% Fe), goethite (FeO(OH), 62.9% Fe), limonite (FeO(OH)·n(H2O), 55% Fe), or siderite (FeCO3, 48.2% Fe).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mesabi Range</span> Mining district in northeastern Minnesota

The Mesabi Iron Range is a mining district and mountain range in northeastern Minnesota following an elongate trend containing large deposits of iron ore. It is the largest of four major iron ranges in the region collectively known as the Iron Range of Minnesota. First described in 1866, it is the chief iron ore mining district in the United States. The district is located largely in Itasca and Saint Louis counties. It has been extensively worked since 1892, and has seen a transition from high-grade direct shipping ores through gravity concentrates to the current industry exclusively producing iron ore (taconite) pellets. Production has been dominantly controlled by vertically integrated steelmakers since 1901, and therefore is dictated largely by US ironmaking capacity and demand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taconite</span> Variety of iron-bearing sedimentary rock

Taconite is a variety of banded iron formation, an iron-bearing sedimentary rock, in which the iron minerals are interlayered with quartz, chert, or carbonate. The name taconyte was coined by Horace Vaughn Winchell (1865–1923) – son of Newton Horace Winchell, the Minnesota state geologist – during their pioneering investigations of the Precambrian Biwabik Iron Formation of northeastern Minnesota. He believed the sedimentary rock sequence hosting the iron-formation was correlative with the Taconic orogeny of New England, and referred to the unfamiliar and as-yet-unnamed iron-bearing rock as the 'taconic rock' or taconyte.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iron Range</span> Iron-ore mining districts around Lake Superior in the United States and Canada

The Iron Range is collectively or individually a number of elongated iron-ore mining districts around Lake Superior in the United States and Canada. Much of the ore-bearing region lies alongside the range of granite hills formed by the Giants Range batholith. These cherty iron ore deposits are Precambrian in the Vermilion Range and middle Precambrian in the Mesabi and Cuyuna ranges, all in Minnesota. The Gogebic Range in Wisconsin and the Marquette Iron Range and Menominee Range in Michigan have similar characteristics and are of similar age. Natural ores and concentrates were produced from 1848 until the mid-1950s, when taconites and jaspers were concentrated and pelletized, and started to become the major source of iron production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vermilion Range (Minnesota)</span> Iron ore deposit in Minnesota

The Vermilion Range exists between Tower, Minnesota and Ely, Minnesota, and contains significant deposits of iron ore. Together with the Mesabi, Gunflint, and Cuyuna ranges, these four constitute the Iron Ranges of northern Minnesota. While the Mesabi Range had iron ore close enough to the surface to enable pit mining, mines had to be dug deep underground to reach the ore of the Vermilion and Cuyuna ranges. The Soudan mine was nearly 1/2 mile underground and required blasting of Precambrian sedimentary bedrock.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuyuna Range</span> Iron mining range in northern Minnesota

The Cuyuna Range is an inactive iron range to the southwest of the Mesabi Range, largely within Crow Wing County, Minnesota. It lies along a 68-mile-long (109 km) line between Brainerd, Minnesota, and Aitkin, Minnesota. The width ranges from 1 to 10 miles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hull–Rust–Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine</span> United States historic place

The Hull–Rust–Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine in Hibbing, Minnesota, United States, is the largest operating open-pit iron mine in Minnesota. The pit stretches more than three miles (5 km) long, two miles (3 km) wide, and 535 feet (163 m) deep. It was established in 1895 and was one of the world's first mechanized open-pit mines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cleveland-Cliffs</span> Cleveland-based steelmaking company

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. is an American steel manufacturer based in Cleveland, Ohio. They specialize in the mining, beneficiation, and pelletizing of iron ore, as well as steelmaking, including stamping and tooling. The company was the world's 25th-largest steel producer and the third-largest in the United States in 2022. It is the largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seven Iron Brothers</span> Iron-ore pioneers in Minnesota, US

The Seven Iron Men, also known as the Merritt brothers, were iron-ore pioneers in the Mesabi Range in northeastern Minnesota and the creation of the city that is now known as Mountain Iron. In the late 1800s, the Merritt family founded the largest iron mine in the world and initiated the consolidation of the American railway system into what would ultimately become the United States Steel Corporation. Their story was told, in part, by the book Seven Iron Men by Paul de Kruif. The book was first published in 1929.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copper mining in the United States</span>

In the United States, copper mining has been a major industry since the rise of the northern Michigan copper district in the 1840s. In 2017, the US produced 1.27 million metric tonnes of copper, worth $8 billion, making it the world's fourth largest copper producer, after Chile, China, and Peru. Copper was produced from 23 mines in the US. Top copper producing states in 2014 were Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Montana. Minor production also came from Idaho and Missouri. As of 2014, the US had 45 million tonnes of known remaining reserves of copper, the fifth largest known copper reserves in the world, after Chile, Australia, Peru, and Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gogebic Range</span> Iron ore region in Michigan and Wisconsin

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ore dock</span> Transportation construction

An ore dock is a large structure used for loading ore onto ships, which then carry the ore to steelworks or to transshipment points. Most known ore docks were constructed near iron mines on the upper Great Lakes and served the lower Great Lakes. Ore docks still in existence are typically about 60 feet (18 m) wide, 80 feet (24 m) high, and vary from 900 feet (270 m) to 2,400 feet (730 m) in length. They are commonly constructed from wood, steel, reinforced concrete, or combinations of these materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manganese, Minnesota</span> Ghost town in Minnesota, United States

Manganese is a ghost town and former mining community in the U.S. state of Minnesota that was inhabited between 1912 and 1960. It was built in Crow Wing County on the Cuyuna Iron Range in sections 23 and 28 of Wolford Township, about 2 miles (3 km) north of Trommald, Minnesota. After its formal dissolution, Manganese was absorbed by Wolford Township; the former town site is located between Coles Lake and Flynn Lake. First appearing in the U.S. Census of 1920 with an already dwindling population of 183, the village was abandoned by 1960.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marquette Iron Range</span> Iron ore deposit in Michigan, US

The Marquette Iron Range is a deposit of iron ore located in Marquette County, Michigan in the United States. The towns of Ishpeming and Negaunee developed as a result of mining this deposit. A smaller counterpart of Minnesota's Mesabi Range, this is one of two iron ranges in the Lake Superior basin that are in active production as of 2018. The iron ore of the Marquette Range has been mined continuously from 1847 until the present day. Marquette Iron Range is the deposit's popular and commercial name; it is also known to geologists as the Negaunee Iron Formation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animikie Group</span> North American geologic group

The Animikie Group is a geologic group composed of sedimentary and metasedimentary rock, having been originally deposited between 2,500 and 1,800 million years ago during the Paleoproterozoic era, within the Animikie Basin. This group of formations is geographically divided into the Gunflint Range, the Mesabi and Vermilion ranges, and the Cuyuna Range. On the map, the Animikie Group is the dark gray northeast-trending belt which ranges from south-central Minnesota, U.S., up to Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. The Gunflint Iron Range is the linear black formation labeled G, the Mesabi Iron Range is the jagged black linear formation labeled F, and Cuyuna Iron Range is the two black spots labeled E. The gabbro of the Duluth Complex, intruded during the formation of the Midcontinent Rift, separates the Mesabi and Gunflint iron ranges; it is shown by the speckled area wrapping around the western end of Lake Superior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jackson Mine</span> United States historic place

The Jackson Mine is an open pit iron mine in Negaunee, Michigan, extracting resources from the Marquette Iron Range. The first iron mine in the Lake Superior region, Jackson Mine was designated as a Michigan State Historic Site in 1956 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. The Lake Superior Mining Institute said, the mine "is attractive in the iron ore region of Michigan and the entire Lake Superior region, because of the fact it was here that the first discovery of iron ore was made, here the first mining was done, and from its ore the first iron was manufactured." Multiple other mines soon followed the Jackson's lead, establishing the foundation of the economy of the entire region. The mine is located northwest of intersection of Business M-28 and Cornish Town Road.

The Oliver Iron Mining Company was a mining company operating in Minnesota, United States. It was one of the most prominent companies in the early decades of mining on the Mesabi Range. As a division of U.S. Steel, Oliver dwarfed its competitors—in 1920, it operated 128 mines across the region, while its largest competitor operated only 65.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elcor, Minnesota</span> Ghost town in Minnesota, United States

Elcor is a ghost town, or more properly, an extinct town, in the U.S. state of Minnesota that was inhabited between 1897 and 1956. It was built on the Mesabi Iron Range near the city of Gilbert in St. Louis County. Elcor was its own unincorporated community before it was abandoned and was never a neighborhood proper of the city of Gilbert. Not rating a figure in the national census, the people of Elcor were only generally considered to be citizens of Gilbert. The area where Elcor was located was annexed by Gilbert when its existing city boundaries were expanded after 1969.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the iron and steel industry in the United States</span>

The US iron and steel industry has paralleled the industry in other countries in technological developments. In the 1800s, the US switched from charcoal to coal in ore smelting, adopted the Bessemer process, and saw the rise of very large integrated steel mills. In the 20th century, the US industry successively adopted the open hearth furnace, then the basic oxygen steelmaking process. Since the American industry peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, the US industry has shifted to small mini-mills and specialty mills, using iron and steel scrap as feedstock, rather than iron ore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pickands Mather Group</span> American company which provides shipping of bulk commodities

The Pickands Mather Group is an American company which provides shipping of coal and other bulk commodities, and the purchase, sale, and marketing of bulk coal. Founded in 1883 as Pickands Mather & Company, it once had the second largest shipping fleet on the Great Lakes in the 1910s and 1920s. The company was purchased by the Diamond Shamrock Corporation in 1968, which in turn sold it to the Moore-McCormack Resources in 1973. Moore-McCormack sold Pickands Mather's mining interests to Cleveland-Cliffs in 1986. Moore-McCormack then spun off the Interlake Steamship Company to James Barker and Paul R. Tregurtha in 1987. Pickands Mather was sold to a management group in 1992, and continues to operate as a private company.

References

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