At the turn of the last century, the only community on the White Iron Chain of Lakes was an Ojibwe settlement where White Iron Beach Resort is now located. Led by Chief John Beargrease (a relative of the famous dogsled postman), the villagers frequented their hunting camp on dometopped Beargrease Island south of Ringrock Narrows.
The smaller island in the channel between Beargrease and the narrows was their cemetery. Their dead were buried sitting upright in deep graves with their knives, beads and moccasins and other items ready for their journey to the happy hunting grounds.
Graves were capped off with small houses, remnants of which were still apparent in the 1970s. Game and fish were plentiful, including caribou, and the village quietly flourished.
But change was coming. Prospectors who combed the Northwoods in the late 1800s identified over 200 pockets of iron ore plus hints of copper, gold and silver. A small but extremely high-quality pocket of hematite was found in the square-mile of acreage along the St. Louis/Lake County border known as Section 30 of Township 63, Range 11 in the Vermilion Iron Range.
In fact, it was such a promising find that numerous competing claims to the ore resulted in a 15-year lawsuit that cost an astounding $1 million and was finally resolved by U.S. Supreme Court in 1902.
The winners, the Merritt brothers, began mining in 1902. The project was fraught with problems and mining happened in fits & starts in the years that followed, but a town grew on the hilltop next to the two pits.
By 1910, over 150 men worked the mine, and trains hauled 250 tons of ore per day. In 1918, its peak year, employment reached 385 and the village had 50 homes. It also had many boarding houses, a post office, a school and the St. Clair Hospital, named after the town doc George, who kept a pet bear to entertain kids.
But the center of activity was William & Nellie Oppel’s General Store. A fore-runner of modern shopping centers, it was famous throughout the area and did so well, it employed 8 clerks, a bookkeeper and two butchers. Added color was provided by the Ojibwe from White Iron who came to trade fur and berries.
William & Nellie reinvested their prosperity in the community by adding a pool hall, dance hall, and silent movie theater on the back of their grocery store.
In addition to Mary Pickford films, weekly craft nights & singalongs were held there. In 1930, they built their summer home on White Iron Lake, the pale-yellow, lodge-like cabin that remains prominent on the point between White Iron Beach and Silver Rapids.
Since Section had no streets or cars during its first decade, it was a very tight community – folks couldn’t travel far and were stuck together.
The Finns, Bohemians, Italians, Swedes and Cornishmen all got along. Since homes had no plumbing for baths, they all joined the Finns for sauna night. They worked together to harvest ice from White Iron Lake for summer refrigeration.
Even the one church was non-denominational, although the Catholic kids would catch a ride on the beer wagon for catechism classes in Ely. Community gardens were so productive that when welfare came along, many had little need for the service. The kids played games of cricket and “run sheep run.” But there were chores: “We couldn’t go to Ely to see the 4th of July parade unless we picked the bugs off the potatoes.”
Agitators with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led to some strife. In 1914, the Ely Miner reported that a pitched battle took place between Italian and Montenegrin miners. No one died but “blood flowed freely.” In 1919, the IWW prompted a strike led by a “group of young, single Bulgarians handy with the revolver and knife.”
But they all had more to fear from the mine itself, which was deadly. One settler recalled that among her five childhood friends, only one had a living father, the rest all killed in cave-ins. One family recalled that a boulder blasted from the mine crashed through their roof. They moved.
Ultimately, the mine was short-lived. It played out in 1923 after producing 1.5 million tons of high-grade ore. (By contrast, 800 million tons of ore were harvested from Virginia’s Hull Rust pit during its 120 years.) As the population of 500 steadily dwindled, many of the homes were moved to Ely. (Valued at about $500 each, it cost the same to move them – several still exist). The Oppel store carried on until 1959, and the Section 30 school wasn’t closed until 1969. (In tribute to the quality of that school, old timers note that the students who transferred to Ely “did extremely well.”) Section 30’s lone remaining resident is Marlene Skube, 81. She lives in her grandmother Matilda Harri’s house at 13 Corners Road, which had been a boarding house and candy store. She fondly remembers the oneroom, one-teacher school for grades one to six and her class of three kids.
She grew up right across from the pits. They’re still there – two dangerous deep holes with 80-foot walls that have tempted many Ely teens to jump into the pools below. Playing around the pits was tempting for Marlene and her childhood friends as well.
“My parents warned us never to go there and would check our shoes after play days for red dust.” She especially enjoyed helping Nellie Oppel at the grocery store.
“She was such a nice lady, and it was great fun to stock the candy shelves.” And she was very patient with the kids as they’d try to decide how to spend their precious five cents.
Marlene, born in Section 30 in 1944, remembers the board walks that led to Garden Lake, for Sunday family picnics, and to Winton, where she’d catch the train for a 10 cent ride to Ely and back.
She walked to Sunny Dene Resort on Fall Lake (now Vets on the Lake) to play with the native kids whose Ojibwe parents worked there.
Marlene notes that in addition to her home, another well-known remnant is the quaint tilted cabin with red hand pump at the junction of Kawishiwi Trail and 13 Corners Road. It was the original Fall Lake Town Hall. Other homes tucked in the woods nearby were party of Section 30’s “Sellwood Location.”
A proposal in the 1960s called for developing a Section 30 Mine History Walk. The draft map proposed paths around the pits and the ruins of engine houses, along with a picnic area, pine forest, viewpoints and parking. Nothing came of it.
The pits are now privately owned but remain remarkably scenic, even though the pools below were used for years as dumps. Historians have noted that as short lived as the Section 30 mine was (14 years), the fact that this community with a boom & bust economy lingered on for over 50 more years attests to how tight-knit its residents were.
