IRON MOUNTAIN

Region: Iron River, Iron Mountain & the Menominee Range

Clcik to enlarge

The industrial powerhouses of the Western Upper Peninsula are the sprawling city of Iron Mountain (pop. 7,700), with its dispersed neighborhoods built around mineshafts, and its younger, trimmer sister city of Kingsford (population 5,300), which mushroomed around a Ford Motor Company complex in 1923.
To the casual motorist, the sprawl on U.S. 2 going through the Iron Mountain area is off-putting. But Iron Mountain has its share of tucked-away beauty spots and some memorable people, downtown businesses, and restaurants. Iron Mountain is known for good homestyle Italian cooking. And it's one of the very few places in the U.P. where fashion is even relevant, as seen in the high-caliber donated merchandise at its thrift stores (an attractive Goodwill in the Midtown Mall on U.S. 2 just east of downtown, and St. Vincent de Paul's at 117 West A Street downtown).

On the southern edge of downtown, the impressive Dickinson County Courthouse was built in 1896. The last of Michigan's 83 counties, Dickinson came into being in 1891 as Menominee Range mines proliferated in the area.

Iron Mountain's earliest settlers arrived when iron was found here in 1879. By 1886 the population had skyrocketed to 8,000. Two years later Iron Mountain's mines, the Chapin, the Hamilton, and the Millie, employed 3,525 men. In 1914 the boom years around 1890 were described in a talk by Mrs. Isaac Ungerer, wife of a local retail businessman. Times were good, she said, and the city prosperous and spreading out in all directions, and the people spending money like water.

Looming along downtown US-2 is the imposing 1927 Art Deco Commercial National Bank Building. Architectural historian Kathryn Eckhert admires its "stylized depictions of fleur-de-lis and rams' heads in yellowish white terracotta."

recalled with pride various improvements befitting Iron Mountain's new prominence, tossing in an occasional comment on the all-important social distinctions to be maintained between miners and their betters. She reported that in 1887 alone the area got a new pulp mill (at Quinnesec Falls, home of a giant paper plant today), the Bell Telephone system, and a hospital "admitting such patients as were not acceptable at the Chapin Hospital." The opening of a hotel was celebrated by a grand ball given for the aristocracy of Iron Mountain, followed by a party "for the less fortunate brothers."

While iron ore was long the economic basis of the Iron Mountain region, making paper from U.P. trees now keeps the economy going. Verso Paper's Quinnesec mill on U.S. 2 five miles east of Iron Mountain is the largest plant in the U.P. Built in 1985, it employs over 540 and makes coated paper. Big logging trucks from near and far bring an almost constant flow of timber here.

By 1890, larger, better capitalized operators were buying up many mines throughout the iron ranges. Then the Panic of 1893 caused widespread layoffs and the threat of violence. Little note has been made of how ownership of Michigan iron mines, like many other spheres of American capitalism of the time, were controlled by the notorious monopolistic financial and transportation octopuses and trusts. These combinations of mining, shipping, rail, and financial interests provoked Frank Norris's muckraking novels and the trust-busting reforms of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era.

After the Panic of 1893, mines closed, and it looked as if unemployed miners might resort to violence. The Chapin Mine and many other Menominee Range mines were bought at fire-sale prices by Mark Hanna, the Cleveland iron magnate. As the natinal Republican Party boss, he was so powerful that he engineered McKinley's presidential victory over the populist William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Hanna controlled a huge segment of the entire nation's business interests. In 1914 Mrs. Ungerer, the ladies' club historian, expressed gratitude about how" the Hon. Mark A. Hanna came to our rescue, by taking over the Chapin Mine and putting 500 men to work."

Civic leaders actively recruited businesses after Ford began to close its operations in the region. The Iron Mountain area continues to have one of the strongest economic bases in the U.P. Paper mills are big employers: the Quinnesec Mill (602 employees), StoraEnso (formerly the old Kimberly Clark Kleenex plant, more recently Consolidated Papers) in Niagara (450), and the Louisiana Pacific plant that makes 4x8-foot particle board in Sagola (178). Another large and fast-growing firm, Cable Constructors, has over 500 employees who install TV cable systems around the country. The large Wisconsin-based Grede foundry empire has a foundry in Kingsford with 485 employees. They make valves and other grey iron castings with complex internal shapes. Nationally prominent Khoury's 150 employees make do-it-yourself furniture kits.

Note on alphabetical street names: Iron Mountain's central area developed south from the Chapin Mine, which collapsed to form a pit in 1940. Streets go south from the pit, from A and B streets in downtown's core to H and I on the south side.

Return to Iron River, Iron Mountain & the Menominee Range

PLACES AROUND IRON MOUNTAIN TO

Eat Sleep Camp