Minnesota to close state park on Iron Range, turn it back into a mine
Minnesota will shutter a state park in the Mesabi Iron Range near the headwaters of the Mississippi River to turn the land back into an active mine.
A reclamation company wants to capture the vast waste pilings at Hill Annex Mine State Park in Calumet, Minn., that were built up during the site's decades as an iron mine and process useful commercial iron ore out of the piles. In order to prepare for that, the state park would have to close.
The state House and Senate have pushed forward proposals to decommission the state park, which could happen in the coming weeks.The company, called Calumet Reclamation, hopes to start processing the ore by next spring, said Mike Liljegren, an assistant director for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
Cliffs Nashwauk has also proposed a project to start mining the site again by 2029 and taking the ore by train to Hibbing Taconite, Liljegren said.
The site was last mined about 50 years ago and was abandoned before state reclamation laws existed. Lawmakers turned the 625-acre site, primarily made up of the old mine pit, into a state park in the 1980s. But the idea was always that the land would remain available if a company came along that could revitalize the mine, said Ann Pierce, director of the DNR's parks and trails division.
"A park may not be the best use of this site," Pierce said.
It's one of the state's least visited parks. Only 2,500 people visited in 2017, the last year the state kept records.
Rising water levels at abandoned pits like Hill Annex have become problems for the state, and the small towns on their shores. The Hill Annex pit is about 40 feet shy of flooding, and has been rising between 5 to 7 feet every year, said John Tuorila, the mayor of Calumet.
"That means we've got maybe 7 or 8 years left before that happens," Tuorila said.
The state once offered pontoon boat rides across the pit as it steadily filled up with groundwater and rain. But the boat rides have stopped as the shoreline has eroded. Bus tours that took visitors deep down into the mine became shorter each year as water levels rose. Years ago, the bus failed an inspection and the tours stopped.
Tuorila grew up in Calumet, a town of about 300, and remembers the red dust that would blow from the mine and cover the cars, homes and clothes of everyone who lived there. He has spent much of his 17 years as mayor trying to get the state to invest in the park, to keep it open and water levels manageable.
The University of Minnesota used to host annual fossil tours, where people combed through the legacy ore piles and upturned rock and earth that had spent millions of years underground. They would find shark teeth and other relics. Those tours, too, have stopped, Tuorila said.
The park is now open only in the summer for two days a week. The public areas are now mainly one overlook site and a mining museum that was created at the old Hill Annex clubhouse, where single miners would rent rooms and hold dances.
Tuorila said he will be sad to see the park go. But he knows that the potential for new jobs and tax money, as well as finding someone to start pumping water from the pit is an opportunity that can't be easily passed. He said the museum at the old clubhouse probably can't be saved, but he hopes the artifacts inside from the town and the mine can be salvaged and put on display somewhere, that they won't be lost, like shark teeth, to time.
