Ironwood: Iron, Immigrants, and the Gogebic Range

Ironwood was named for James "Iron" Wood, who sank a test pit here in eighteen eighty-two and discovered one of the richest iron ore deposits on the continent. The railroad arrived in eighteen eighty-four, and within seven years six mines were operating with more than three thousand men at work. Finns, Swedes, Poles, and other immigrant miners poured in, turning a wilderness clearing into a city almost overnight.

Mining peaked in nineteen twenty and shut down entirely in nineteen sixty-seven. What's left is a quiet Upper Peninsula city wearing a boom-era skyline it never quite grew into, a reminder that the Gogebic Range once rivaled any iron district in the world.