IRONWOOD

Region: Ironwood & the Gogebic Range

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The business and mining center of the Gogebic Iron Range, Ironwood remains one of the Upper Peninsula's livelier cities, even though its population has declined almost two-thirds since1930. Back then the mines were going strong, and the population was 14,300. In the 2010 census, the city's population was 5,387.
Those who follow busy U.S. 2 on its east-west path along the northern edge of the city get no sense of Ironwood at all. To see the town's faded but interesting heart, head south from U.S. 2 on the north-south thoroughfares of Douglas/Bus. Route 2 or Hemlock. First you see tidy neighborhoods of Arts and Crafts bungalows and colonial houses, home to mid-level mining employees and local businesspeople. Then come the train tracks, the eye-catching 1892 depot (now home to city's enticing historical museum), and downtown.

While much of Ironwood's commercial activity has moved north to US 2, its downtown still has a variety of attractions.

Central Ironwood is anchored by Aurora Street with its boxy, trim buildings of the 1920s. There are elegant terra cotta storefronts and the wonderful 1928 Ironwood Theatre with its stately bronze marquee and looming vertical neon sign. The 1,200 seats made it the biggest theater in the Upper Peninsula. Its style reflects the restrained respectability promoted by the city's chief employer, the Oliver Mining Company, a division of U.S. Steel. So do the sedate churches up the hill northeast of downtown, the magnificent Ironwood Memorial Building, and the L.L. Wright High School a bit further east on Ayer.

Ironwood in 1886, just before it was incorporated as a village. The next year a fire burned down half the downtown, which was soon rebuilt. By 1900 it would have over 10,000 residents, almost twice today's population.

Unlike many of the old U.P. mining cities, Ironwood's downtown still has cool shops like Dan's Antique Mall and the Fabric Patch, a serious food co-op, and a pretty little park at Aurora and Suffolk.

A postcard of the old city hall.

A few elaborate Queen Anne mansions remain from Ironwood's late 19th century. These houses are east of the churches along McLeod (the street just south of Aurora). Later Ironwood became a company town after Andrew Carnegie's Oliver Mining Company and John D. Rockefeller investments came to dominate the city's economy.

Just south of downtown stretches a long, vacant space. These are "the caves" from the collapse of mines early in the 1890s due to unsupported excavation. A local history buff calls this "a wound that literally cut the city in half." This area also marks the social divide between the middle-class town to the north and the workers' mining locations to the south. The most visible location is the well-kept Norrie Location beyond the World's Largest Indian at the east end of Suffolk (the southeastern extension of Business Route 2).

Each mine location is a neighborhood of mining families clustered around a mineshaft, isolated from each other by piles of mine waste. While the Gogebic Range remained productive, a string of mineshaft locations extended along the ridge from Ironwood to Bessemer and Wakefield.

Return to Ironwood & the Gogebic Range

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