Minneapolis was the home of the regional offices of the US Bureau of Mines, an organization founded in 1910 as part of the Department of the Interior. Bureau of Mines was founded in the wake […]

Minneapolis was the home of the regional offices of the US Bureau of Mines, an organization founded in 1910 as part of the Department of the Interior. Bureau of Mines was founded in the wake […]
Clyde Iron Works made the highest capacity cranes in the world in Duluth, decades after the industrial town got rusty. Then, a few years ago most of the complex was demolished to make room for a hockey rink. The machine shop is now a bar and grill.
Cramer Tunnel connected LTV Steel’s taconite mine and concentrator with its ore dock at Taconite Harbor. It served from 1957 to 2001, when LTV declared bankruptcy for the last time.
On your left you see Dock 6, retrofitted with conveyor belts, swarming with hard men and cold trains, bathed in orange light and smelling of taconite, oil, and sweat. On the right is a stripped, dark, empty, motionless chunk of steel jutting into Lake Superior, an island in so many ways. Read on to find out where the good days went.
Climbing that ladder let me see through the steam, by the orange light of the sunset dumping through the sooted skylights like the shop lights on the dead crane. It had been a while since it lifted a locomotive off its chasis, but the smell of grease was still strong enough to lubricate my sinuses
The underground history of some of Duluth’s most notable sewers, drains, and substreet creeks.
In nineteen-oh-nine when the winds blew colder,
Nine-hundred and twenty feet long…
This armory was built in 1915 for the 3rd Regiment of the Minnesota National Guard. During the World Wars, it was a place where troops would train and muster, and where equipment was stored. Occasionally, […]
In mid-1880s, a few men began tunneling under downtown Duluth looking for a fortune. Now there’s no trace of their labor under the Point of Rocks, is there?
It started as a rumor, then I heard it over and over–there was an abandoned train tunnel outside Duluth.
Why write, who cares? The door asked… I guess I just didn’t have an answer. I’ll keep doing my thing, I thought, and you keep doing yours. Now, how best to capture the fingernail scratches around this padded room’s peep hole?