The Republic mine was twice one of the country's greatest producers, from 1872 to 1928 and again from the 1950s through the 1970s. It spurred the creation of the village of Republic in 1871, also called Iron City. Government geologists recorded the mountain of specular oxide of iron above the Michigamme River in 1848, and the Republic Iron Company was formed in 1870 by Edward Breitung, S.P. Ely, and E.D. Parsons. In the fall of 1871, the path from Humboldt to the new mine was widened under the direction of first mine captain Peter Pascoe, who served for twenty years and then for two years as a state senator. Immigrants from Cornwall, Canada, Sweden, Norway, and Ireland quickly filled the town and made the area a vital part of the Upper Peninsula, and by 1920 Finns outnumbered other groups. Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company took ownership of the underground Republic Mine in 1914, but by 1928 demand for ore had fallen, the mine closed, and the Great Depression followed. When CCI reopened and expanded it as an open pit mine during the 1950s, mining resumed and a thirty-year boom followed. The expansion required several sections of the town to be moved about three miles south. In 1981, high production costs and recession forced CCI to close the mine. Equipment was removed during the late 1990s, buildings were eventually demolished, and the huge open pit now fills with water beneath a towering man-made mountain, leaving the history and memories of a mining town.