Iron Mining in Wisconsin

Iron mining in Wisconsin began in Sauk, Dodge, and Jackson counties in the southern part of the state in the 1850’s, but discoveries of vast new deposits shifted the focus to northern Wisconsin in 1880. From the mid-1880’s to the mid-1960’s, the major iron mining area was the Gogebic Iron Range, which extends for 80 miles from Lake Gogebic in Michigan to Lake Namekagon in Wisconsin. Forty-five to 70.7 million tons of ore produced from the Gogebic Iron Range in Wisconsin came from the Cary Mine near Hurley and the Montreal Mine at Montreal, while the remaining ore came from smaller mines such as the Ottawa, Atlantic, Iron Belt, Germania, and Plummer mines, most of which ceased operation before World War I. The Montreal and Cary mines closed in the 1960’s when the steel industry changed from using high-grade iron ore from deep-shaft mines to using abundant taconite ore that could be economically mined by the open-pit method. At the time of closing, the Montreal and Cary mines were producing ore from workings nearly one mile deep, and the last iron ore from the Gogebic Iron Range in Wisconsin was shipped from the Cary Mine in 1965.

Kimball, Wisconsin · United States