Soudan Underground Mine

The largest and deepest iron mine in Minnesota closed back in 1962 and is open for tours. The iron ore hematite is rich, but the process of a deep mine is more expensive than surface mines even when those mines have lower quality taconite iron ore like what we saw in Gilbert.

The pits used to be surface mines until the dangers of falling rocks and even falling trees led them to decide to mine underground.

The tour seemed like an amusement ride at times. The ride down is a small elevator car. Though 18 workers rode in this car when the mine was open, it was more like 10 people for our tour and we still were fairly crammed. The depth of 2300 feet meant my ears popped several times on the way down.

Then we rode an electric train horizontally. Both “rides” were very noisy. By the way, the place was cold. It averages 51 F. The train ride seemed colder than that so that I was happy to be in the middle of the car.

One story was that one type of the ore transport cars were called Larrys. They were similar to British Lorries. The guys didn’t think a women’s name (Laurie) could do hard work so they renamed them Larry.

The geology is pretty cool. This is a banded iron formation that is supposed to be 2.5 billion years old. The iron ore rocks we see are extremely heavy. The guide mentioned that the hematite in this area is 70% iron. It’s heavy!