Industrial Landscapes: Culture-Nature-Memory
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Ghost Plants

blogging at the intersection of industrial heritage
 and 
environmental history

Crosby Washing Plant - Nashwauk, MN

9/19/2015

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"The washing of iron ore means more than most people realize...The evolution of the concentrating process has allowed the development of iron-ore deposits that have brought millions to the owners, to the operators and to the public."
Nashwauk, MN is located in Itasca Co, within the western branch of the Mesabi Range, a geologic region known historically for its abundance of low-grade, siliceous iron ores.  These ores, unlike the direct shipping ores that brought fame and fortune to the Vermillion Range, were encased in the earth like baklava, with thin layers of silica gangue mixed with thin layers of iron ore.  Mining engineers and furnace operators found this ore to be irritable, and when fed directly to the blast furnaces it caused a sort of industrial indigestion as the high-silica content in the ore had a tendency to clog-up the furnace's innards.
"The Crosby plant, which is typical in size of the others, is a steel structure with dimensions of 62 x 67 ft. and has an extreme height of 81 ft.  The machinery is all of Allis-Chalmers manufacture." 
L.A. Rossman, "Nashwauk Iron-Washing Plants", in Engineering and Mining Journal, Vol. 102, No. 12, 
Sept. 16, 1916, pp. 491
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Crosby Washing Plant - 1916 (Engineering & Mining Journal, Vol. 102, No. 12, Sept. 16, 1916, pp. 491).

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The Arcturus & Holman Pilot Plants - Taconite, MN 

9/11/2015

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"But the experiment is being made on a most important scale by men of  ample means who usually succeed in what they attempt." 
(Dwight E. Woodbridge, "Concentration of Mesabi Ores", in The Engineering and Mining Journal, Vol. 77, June 16, 1904, pp. 960-961.) 
Picture
The Arcturus Experimental Concentrating Plant - 1903 From Mining and Metallurgy, 1941, pp.405.

Although the Trout Lake Concentrator was the first full scale, low-grade iron ore concentrator on the Mesabi Range, a handful of experimental (or pilot) plants proceeded it.  Mining Companies were well aware of the potentially profitable low-grade iron ore deposits in the western Mesabi starting in the late 1890s, and by the turn of the twentieth century, The Oliver Iron Mining Co. (OIMC) took the first step in making this geologic probability an envirotechnical reality.  The Acturus Mine, located roughly a mile northwest of Marble, MN, is where the story of Lake Superior iron ore concentration begins.


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The Trout Lake Concentrator - Coleraine, MN

9/3/2015

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"The mill building is commodious and the machinery 
is conveniently arranged." 

Picture
The Trout Lake Concentrator circa 1920
The Trout Lake Concentrator is the first in the series of ghost plants that this blog will cover.  Ghost plants are are those industrial complexes that are visibly absent from the landscape, but whose environmental legacies persist - sometimes in ground water, other times in soils - but remain frequently absent from the contemporary heritage discourse.   A goal of my research is to think about how we, as heritage professionals, can act as necromancers and bring  these Ghost plants, and their environmental legacies, back to life within the contemporary heritage discourse.

The first post in the beneficiation plant series features the Oliver Iron Mining Company's (OIMC) flagship plant, The Trout Lake Concentrator.  Completed in 1909 (construction started in 1907) on the eastern shore of Trout Lake, just south of Coleraine, MN, the Trout Lake Concentrator served as a custom beneficiation plant for the OIMC's low-grade iron ore mines of the Western Mesabi.  These mines were mainly open-pit undertakings, rather than the underground mines that produced much of the high-grade, direct shipping ore of the region.

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    Author

    John Baeten holds a PhD in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology from Michigan Technological University. His research aims to contextualize the environmental legacies of industrialization as meaningful cultural heritage.

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  • Draining the Swamp: A Story Map
  • Story Map: The Lake Superior Iron District
  • Mining Landscapes
  • Ghost Plants
  • About