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

CHAPTER XXIII
THE HISTORY OF HIBBING, MINNESOTA
The history of Hibbing, "the Place of Big Things," is a wonderful
and holding story, a record of great doings, of wonderful achievements,
and of immense wealth and possibilities—even from the beginning.
Everything connected with Hibbing's history has been big.
In the first place, the stand of timber was such that the lumbermen
made money rapidly in logging it. The seekers for iron had a similar
experience. They made great discoveries. Nothing small was possible
in the Hibbing district. The explorers found such deposits that
the mines subsequently developed have been the most wonderful of
the many stupendous mines of the most wonderful iron range of
America. Hibbing proved to be the center of the treasure country,
the richest portion of the Mesabi Range. And, as she grew, she held
to her original status of supremacy. Hibbing has excelled in most
things, as will be appreciated by a reading of her history. She is a
village, it is true—the "richest village in the world," by the way,—but
she has forged ahead of all other communities of the Range country,
in population and wealth, and is the richest incorporated place in the
county—exceeding Duluth even in wealth, by almost as much as is
the total wealth of the City of Virginia. Hibbing's nearest rival on
the range. It can, therefore, be readily understood that her place in
the state is that of a very important, very promising, and very aggressive
city.
In the Days of the Timber Barons.—To appreciate the story of
Hibbing fully one must have some knowledge of the earliest activities
of white men in its vicinity. The story has grounding in the operations
of the timber barons, the lumber kings, who became the land
barons, and by sitting still soon had the "grubbing ore men" paying
them fief.
Passing briefly over the earliest pre-settlement history. Northern
Minnesota, until 1855, was the hunting ground of the Indian; and it
was not until the seventies were almost spent that white men settled
far from the shore of Lake Superior, at its western extremity. In
the middle sixties and seventies some had passed over the eastern
end of the Mesabi Range—in great numbers during the "gold rush"
to the Vermilion in the sixties, and spasmodically in the seventies,
hoping against hope that the lean magnetite formations of the Eastern
Mesabi would bring a little money to the well-nigh empty pockets
of Duluthians, after the panic of 1873 had taken away Duluth's first
treasure, Jay Cooke. But very few had been in the middle and west-
and those who did
ern parts of the Mesabi Range until the eighties ;
pass along the range, or touched parts of it, were mapmakers, geologists,
or timber cruisers. Geologists, of course, had eyes mainly
for mineral indications, but the cartographers and timber cruisers
might be grouped, the mapmaking being in most cases incidental to
timber cruising. Northern Minnesota was the land of white pine.^
St. Louis County had an especially heavy "stand" ; and Stuntz township
was, it seems, among the best areas in that respect. But nothing
could be done until the government survey had been made and the
vacant lands had been thrown open to entry, which was done in the
seventies and early eighties. The period 1875-1884 was, perhaps,
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