Mining for Hematite

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Today we moved southwest about 50 miles to Tettegouche State Park.  This is one of the largest state parks in Minnesota.  It started out as a logging camp, as it’s location with several lakes and along the Baptism River made it ideal for logging the white and Norway Pines in the area.  In 1910 the land was acquired as a fishing retreat by some Dutch business men.  It was named the Tettegouchi Club.  In 1971 it was sold to the State of Minnesota.

There are lots of hiking opportunities, but we chose it for it’s location.    There are a few trails we plan to check out later in our stay.  

Friday, September 11, 2015

We took a journey today to the Soudan Underground Mine State Park.  The mine is located between the towns of Soudan and Tower, about 25 miles west of Ely.  The park was 85 miles from our campground.  While underground mines are not new to us, this is unique because they mined iron ore.  Most iron ore mines are open pit.

Soudan has the largest and richest veins of Hematite Fe₂O₃ which is the highly desirable version of iron ore in this area due to the higher oxygen content.  At its peak, it produced a million tons of ore per year and operated between 1892 and 1962.  US Steel gave it to the State of Minnesota in 1967.  The ore is embedded in rock, really hard rock, called Ely Greenstone.  Miners, three to a team, would drill and dynamite to free the ore.  In the early days, the only lights were candles.  One guy held the star drill and the other two alternated blows with a sledge hammer.  The drill would be rotated 1/4 turn between blows. Imagine that operation, in near darkness.  Pneumatic drills and battery powered headlamps came in use much later.

Our tour went to the 27th level, the deepest point,  2341 feet below the surface, using a hoist in operation since 1924.  We then travelled 3/4 mile to where they were mining when the operation shut down.  There were 18 men per shift, three shifts and they were employed as contractors, paid by the ton of ore produced.  A cubic foot of hematite weighs about 300 pounds. Soudan was one of the best mines to work in.  Relatively safe and dry.

This is the hoist.  The towers and cable run to the engine house, where an electric motor operates the winch.

Here is the large cable drum.  The small dial toward the center top indicates the level the skip car is at and the red circular gizmo in the lower right is a governor that controls the speed.  The operator’s position is toward the left, behind all the pipes and stuff.

This is the skip car entrance.  18 workers would be crammed into that little space for the ride down or up.

This is tram that took us back into the mine.  In the day, the miners walked this; there were no electric lights, only their headlamps using candles or carbide and later batteries.

The rail cars would be pushed by men, later hauled by donkeys, to the shaft for uploading to the top.

As you can imagine, this was incredibly hard and dangerous work.  And yet in the orientation movie many of the workers interviewed said this mine was the “Cadillac” of mines and actually enjoyed working here.

Since about 1994 they have operated a physics lab on the 27th level.  An area was newly excavated at the same 1/2 mile depth as the mine.  They are studying neutrinos and dark matter.  The location provides them to study these things without the background interference from the sun’s solar particles.

We’re not going to get into much details about this, mainly because we don’t understand it.  You can find out more by searching MINOS and CDMS.  Also http://www.soudan.umn.edu

The project is a joint Fermi and Univ of Minn effort and paid for by the Dept of Energy.  One of the cool things is that neutrinos are tiny, smaller than electrons and pass through anything.  So Fermi lab in Chicago runs these guys through an accelerator and fires them here to Soudan.  And they do get here, through all the rock! 

This is the receiving end for catching the neutrinos from Fermi Chicago.  This thing weighs like 6 tons, brought down here in pieces and assembled on the spot.

While this is all very abstract, as this type of research often is, imagine if neutrinos could be the transmission media of the future. Now, instead of bouncing radio waves off satellites, you fire neutrinos through the earth’s core. Probably a ways off in the future, but maybe possible?

All in all an interesting day!

More Waterfalls

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

We have a big day planned today, three state parks and a national monument; and Mother Nature is cooperating.  It is a cool, but beautiful sunny morning.  All three parks have waterfalls to see.

The first is Cascade Falls, which lies about 15 miles southwest of Grand Marais on the Cascade River.  A note on geography here.  The North Shore Highway 61 runs northeast toward Thunder Bay and southwest toward Duluth.   The Cascade Falls are so named because they are comprised of several smaller falls that cascade through the shallow gorge. 

The speed of the water down this river and over these falls make a deafening roar and is really impressive.  Next stop is at the Judge C.R. Magney State Park to see the Devils Kettle falls.  The trail to this bad boy is a mile long, the last 1000 feet involve 227 steps down toward the the Brule River and you know what that means, we have to climb back up those when we leave.  Think spaghetti legs!

These are the upper falls

The Devils Kettle is a really large falls and the lookout is some distance back.  The left falls plunge into what appears to be a pot hole and the falls on the right drops about 50 feet.  Click the picture to zoom in.  This falls is best viewed as a video.  We can’t upload due to the WiFi here; maybe we’ll be able to do it once back home.

All the water flowing down these rivers has lots of tannic acid due to the decomposing wood and vegetation.  This also creates a lot of foam below the falls due to the organic material in the water.

The last falls is on the Pigeon River, which today creates the U.S. Canadian border.  There is a little history here, so lets jump to the Grand Portage National Monument.  Recall an earlier post about Fort William?  Before Fort William, the Northwest Company use to hold their Rendezvous in Grand Portage.  The town got its name from an 8 mile portage to bypass the falls and rapids of the lower Pigeon River.

So, Grand Portage was the center for furs coming from the west and goods coming from Montreal in the latter 1700s.  The Northwest Company was a huge Canadian company and very profitable.  This area prospered with all the trade passing through, until the border was redrawn along the Pigeon River as a  result of the American Revolution.  NWC was now on US soil.  They moved to Fort William which is now called Thunder Bay.  There were a couple problems; first there weren’t many beaver left in Canada and second was the 8 mile grand portage route was no longer Canadian land and could not be used.  This essentially cut them off from use of the Pigeon River and therefore the west coast.

They used the Kaministiquia River, but it was much narrower and shallow compared to the Pigeon.  That translates into fewer and smaller canoes and less freight.  In 1821 NWC merged with Hudson Bay, but furs were no longer their main business staple.

The Ojibwa were badly impacted by all this.  They were the trappers and they had a close economic relationship with NWC.  After NWC moved, the Ojibwa lost their economic base and the US moved them to reservations.  So now we are trying to make amends.  The National Monument tells their story and Grand Portage is their town, as is the State Park.

At the National Monument, the site of the original fort is being preserved and may be reconstructed at some point.  A few buildings already have been.

This is the entrance to the grand portage as it exists today.  They told of several folks with canoes who are re-tracing the entire route from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Visiting the state park gives you a look at one of the falls the grand portage helped to avoid.

Tomorrow is moving day as we head to Tettegouche State Park.

Grand Marais

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

We are now in Grand Marais, MN.  The weather was looking a bit iffy this morning so we decided to hang around town.  Historically, back in the 1800s Grand Marais was a tourist and commercial fishing mecca.  There were many resorts here and further to the north on what is called the Gunflint Trail that people would visit during summer months.  The town was only served by steamships operating from Port Arthur (Thunder Bay) since there were no roads or railroads serving the area.  Little to no commercial fishing exists here now.  

Today, this community has an abundance of artists, so there are lots of art galleries and shops with items from local artists and craftsman.There were unique and unusual items, but none caught our fancy.  Locally the draw is the very pretty harbor with walks out to the harbor lighthouse and to artist’s point. Here are a few pictures we took as we walked the jetty.

Grand Marais Coast Guard Station

Tomorrow we plan to visit some state parks with waterfalls.

Hymers Fall Fair

Sunday, September 7, 2015

Our plan today was to attend the Hymers Fall Fair.  We mentioned that in a previous post, but as promised, it was raining when we got up.  In fact, it rained much of the night with lots of lightning and thunder.  So we decided to do laundry.  It cleared up by about 2PM, so we headed to Chippewa Park where there was an early vintage carousel, along with other vintage rides, like tilt-a whirl and dodge-em cars. 

 

They also had a wildlife display of animals that had been injured, nursed back to health but are unable to be released back into the wild.  Very few of the animals were out.  The temperature had risen to the upper 80s with high humidity, so they were hanging out in the shade, except for their very fat bear which was laying near water in the shade.  She didn’t even get up to drink, she did it laying on on her side.

Monday, September 8, 2015

It did not cool much overnight, but the humidity dropped.  We woke to a cloudy morning, but no rain, so off we went to the fair.

This was a truly old fashioned farm fair.  No carnival rides, no beer tents, just the good old stuff that fairs used to have.  This fair is in its 103rd year.

Ribbons for the biggest and best in all things agriculture. Peas, corn, squash, pumpkins, and other crops.

Crafts such as quilts, sewing, spun yarn, and flower arrangements were judged.  There was even a kid’s craft section.  Here it was apparent every child got a ribbon.  A “Good Effort” ribbon was given to those whom did not “place”; pretty neat.

Ah yes, there were animals, we saw judging for the best Holstein calf, shown by kids.  We weren’t sure how they were judged, but it was a riot watching the kids trying to get these calves to walk around the arena.

The horse judging today was for the heavy work horse category.  These are draft horses; think Clydesdales.

They were judged on maneuvers, like backing up, negotiating a slalom of cones, flaring to right and left. It was amazing to watch these big animals doing that.

Hymers did have a version of a wet tee-shirt contest.  It was judging which Holstein cow had the nicest udders. Hmmm!

Something Dan enjoyed were the antique engines.  The Kakabeka Falls Tired Iron Club brought a big collection vintage engines.  It was fun to watch these things run.  The smell and sound of these old engines chugging along was great to experience.  The owners were more than happy to talk about them; very cool.

We finished the day off with a traditional Hymers Fair turkey dinner; cheap and quite tasty.

This finishes our Canadian segment of our adventure.  We next head into Minnesota.  We have met many really nice people along this part of our journey.  It has been so easy to strike up a conversation with folks everywhere. In minutes you know all about them, their family, and they ask about our journey, where we’ve been and where were going. Pretty neat!

But we will not miss the Loonies, liters, kilograms, French, milk in bags, and weird brands of stuff.  We just never adapted.

Thunder Bay

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Well, our fabulous weather turned back to what we have experienced, fog.  But by about 2PM much of it burned off to reveal a partly cloudy day.  We went into Thunder Bay itself to visit some of their parks and gardens.  They have many nice gardens and it was nice to see their citizenry utilizing them for walks and biking.  Centennial Lake Park was nice with wide asphalt walkways.  We were looking for a sculpture park in it but couldn’t find it, so we moved on to Hillcrest with it’s sunken gardens. 

The park is a memorial to WWII veterans who lost their lives fighting in the War.  As we have reported, Canada was fully engaged just like the US.  The garden was very pretty with tons of annuals planted.  The flower bill must be staggering.

    

We then went over to Marina Park.  This area looks pretty new and is geared to get people there with artistic features.  The marina is also new and pretty neat.  Note in the dock shot, no pilings.  This seems to be typical of Canadian marinas as we had to deal with it in our boating journeys in Ontario.  Pilings offer better tie up protection in bad weather and give left-handed skippers something to bounce off of in docking maneuvers.

Dan’s camera has a 50x zoom; came in handy for this next one.

This is the Thunder Bay Lighthouse and was a good 1/2 mile from the marina.

There was an art gallery with some interesting works, like the ceramic bowls shown here.

After a DQ stop we headed east along Lakeshore Drive to explore parks and gawk at some nice houses with million dollar views.

That pretty much completed our day.  We are hoping for a continuation of this weather for tomorrow so we can go to the Hymers Fair.

Niagara of the North

Friday, September 4, 2015

Another beautiful sunny day!  We are off to see Kakabeka Falls, located about 30 miles northwest of our location, in a Provincial Park.  Many have told us they are more beautiful than Niagara Falls and have been called the Niagara Falls of the North.  After seeing them we would agree.  They are smaller, the drop is 131 feet, but they cascade over multiple ledges on the way down.  They are in the Kaministiquia River and their flow is controlled by a power plant dam located up river.

The park itself is beautiful.  They have great overlook locations in several areas all connected by boardwalks.  Here are some pictures.

We also visited a few other places today.  Close to the US border is Thunder Oak Cheese Farm.  They make and sell authentic Dutch Gouda Cheese and of course we bought some.  Gouda cheese is not widely available at home, so we really never tried it, but after we did, we were hooked!

We also drove into the little town of Hymers.  This place is so small and remote Garmin couldn’t find it.  They have an old fashioned farm fair going on this weekend, so if the weather cooperates, supposed to have rain Sunday and Monday, we plan to attend.  This was a scouting mission, hopefully we’ll have more on it in a couple days.

The last stop today was to the Terry Fox Memorial.  Terry Fox was a young man from British Columbia afflicted with cancer and lost his right leg to the disease.  To raise money for cancer research and inspire others afflicted, he attempted a Marathon for Cancer by running across Canada.  He made it from New Brunswick to this spot, over 3300 miles, in 2 months, but his cancer returned causing him to stop.  He died a short time later on June 28, 1981.  He was 23.

On the way home we saw these in the yard of a house we passed.

A close view will show these sculptures are comprised of a bunch repurposed stuff joined together.  This person has talent, wouldn’t you agree?  We wonder how many people, like us stop, back up, and get out to take pictures.  Their yard was full of these creations.

Well that concludes another interesting day of our adventure.  Tomorrow we head into the city to explore Thunder Bay.