1921 Duluth & St Louis County MN, Van Brunt.pdf - Garon.us

DULUTH AND ST. LOUIS COUNTY 703
to know anything about the western part of the range, or its trend,
excepting to advance the theory that a blanket formation existed
somewhere inside of the borders of the drift area, and that commercial
deposits of ore could not exist in the formation on account of its
nature and horizontal position which was a complete change, and
unlike any other iron range in the Lake Superior region, or anywhere
known at that time.
"There have been many conflicting stories written by outsiders
on the discovery of the Mesabi range, some contending that the range
was known to the Indians for generations, and by the earliest white
inhabitants of northern Minnesota. Their contentions were true in
certain respects. What is known as the eastern end of the Mesabi
range, which outcrops boldly and is magnetic in character, was
known to exist years before the Mesabi Range proper was discovered.
* * *
"My attention was attracted to the possibility of the existence of
commercial bodies of hematite ore in the southeastern slope, or in
the low lands of the Mesabi Heights, in the year 1883. In the fall of
that year, I made a trip from Agate Bay (where now is the city of
Two Harbors, Lake county, Minn.), accompanied by one James Lane.
Our route was across country, following as nearly as possible the
survey of the Duluth and Iron Range Railroad, which was then being
constructed from Agate Bay to Tower. The purpose of the trip was
to inspect the country, along the survey, for its mineral possibilities.
At a point about one mile southeasterly of what is known as the
Mesabi Gap, and south of the Tamarack swamp which lies at the foot
of the gap, my attention was attracted by fragments of quartz and
clean pieces of hematite ore strewn over the surface, at a point which
I learned after to be in section 20, township 59-14. I spent a few
days in that vicinity, exploring the country as far east as the magnetic
cropping, and southwest over the hematite formation in the footlands
along the slope of the Mesabi Heights for some distance. In this
latter direction I found numerous indications of drift ore and quartz,
as far as I went. I ascended the hills to the north of the places where
I found the drift in the bottom lands to be the thickest, and in each
ascent I made I found that the drift ore of the character found in the
low lands at the foot of the heights disappeared completely, which
was conclusive evidence that the numerous pieces of clean drift ore
found in the low lands to the south of the Heights did not come from
its summit, nor from the Vermilion range to the north, but must have
come from an iron formation under the surface of the low lands, immediately
south of the Heights. The drift ore did not show any great
glacial wear, indicating plainly that the fragments of the ore were
pressed up from the formation by frost, or broken from the ledge and
washed to the surface by floods or torrents descending from the high
lands through ancient water courses. The theory I formed at that
time on the possible occurrence of merchantable deposits of ore in the
low lands along the southeasterly slope of the Mesabi Heights (only
more in detail) was never changed, and was always followed by me
during all of my exj)lorations in after years on the Mesabi range. I
returned from this trip the same way I went in, and did not return
to the range again for three years. * * *
"Some time during the spring of 1887, I made another trip to the
west end of the range, accompanied by A. J. Harding, then of Duluth.
On this trip, I traced the range to the southwest, from the ledge in
Prairie River to the Mississippi River. * * * i then travelled