18-637: The Michigan Iron Industry Museum , a branch facility of the Michigan Historical Center , is a community museum serving the heritage of the Marquette Iron Range on Michigan's Upper Peninsula . The museum is located in Negaunee , a town built atop the geological strata of the iron range near Marquette . Until recently, Negaunee was a one-industry town that centered on the mining of iron ore . The Negaunee region served as
36-522: A second commodity to the LS&;I's workload. The MM&SE/LS&I also operated a second spur from Marquette northwest to Big Bay . Passenger operations were never major. In 1904 the railroad carried over 180,000 passenger-miles, compared to over 24 million ton-miles (35 million tkm) of freight. In 1931 two trains a day ran each way from Munising to Lawson , Marquette and Princeton . One train ran from Marquette to Big Bay and one on
54-772: A wholly owned short-line railroad, the Lake Superior and Ishpeming , to Marquette for transport by lake freighter to steel mills in the lower Great Lakes. The Marquette Iron Range was designated as a Michigan registered historic site in 1957, listed as S-0035. The Cliffs Shaft Mine Museum in Ishpeming and the Michigan Iron Industry Museum in Negaunee each celebrate the history of the iron ore deposit and its miners. A 47-mile-long (76 km) hiking trail from Republic to Marquette, called
72-531: Is a magnetite or hematite chert . Natural ore deposits are located in synclines and up against mafic dikes . Beneficiation commenced in 1954 and this concentration of iron into pellets accounted for 73 percent of production by 1965. Early mining used open-pit mining methods, but was replaced with underground mining by 1880. The Marquette Iron Range was discovered in 1844 by a party of surveyors led by William A. Burt , who found that their sensitive magnetic compasses produced skewed results because of
90-606: Is also known to geologists as the Negaunee Iron Formation . The geology of the district consists of middle Precambrian rocks in the Animikie Group , which form a westward plunging syncline 33 miles (53 km) long and 3 to 6 miles (4.8 to 9.7 km) wide. The principal iron ore is found in the Negaunee Iron formation . This formation is 2,500 feet (760 m) thick near Negaunee. This
108-660: The Iron Ore Heritage Trail , also provides access to the area's historical sites. Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railroad The Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railroad ( reporting mark LSI ), is a Class III railroad U.S. railroad offering service from Marquette, Michigan , to nearby locations in Michigan's Upper Peninsula . It began operations in 1896. The LS&I continues to operate as an independent railroad from its headquarters in Marquette. At
126-554: The United States. The towns of Ishpeming and Negaunee developed as a result of mining this deposit. A smaller counterpart of Minnesota's Mesabi Range , this is one of two iron ranges in the Lake Superior basin that are in active production as of 2018. The iron ore of the Marquette Range has been mined continuously from 1847 until the present day. Marquette Iron Range is the deposit's popular and commercial name; it
144-535: The center of U.S. iron ore production from about 1880 until approximately 1900, when this role was taken over by iron mines on Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range . The Michigan Iron Industry Museum opened in 1987 close to the Carp River Forge site on the Carp River where Michigan iron ore was first forged in 1848. Admission to the museum is free, and the museum is open year-round. The museum also serves as
162-469: The concentration of iron in the land they were surveying. Mining began in 1847. At first, the hematite iron ore of the Marquette Range was smelted with local charcoal into pig iron , but after the opening of the first Soo Canal in 1855 the iron ore itself began to be shipped down the Great Lakes from the newly developed port city of Marquette . Capitalists from Cleveland played a key role in
180-631: The development of the Marquette Iron Range, and the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company acquired a controlling influence on the range by 1890. Until 2016, Cleveland-Cliffs’ Empire and Tilden mines continued to produce iron ore from the Marquette Range. However, the Empire Mine officially ceased production on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 and was placed in an indefinite idle state. Cleveland-Cliffs ships Tilden ore by
198-591: The east branch from Munising to Shingleton . By 1940 the Munising-to-Princeton and Lawton-to-Marquette service had been reduced to one train a day each way, and Big Bay service was operating three times a week. This level of service lasted at least to 1950. By 1955 the only passenger service remaining was a single daily train from Munising to Princeton; Marquette and Big Bay were no longer served. All passenger service had been discontinued by 1960. By 1962, diesel locomotives had replaced steam locomotives on
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#1732780222863216-400: The end of 1970, LS&I operated 117 miles of road on 241 miles of track (188 on 388 km); that year it reported 43 million ton-miles (63 million tkm) of freight. In 2011, LS&I had been reduced to 25 miles (40 km) of track. The Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railway was organized in 1893 as a subsidiary of Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company (now Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. ),
234-512: The focal point for the Iron Ore Heritage Trail , a 47-mile (76 km) bicycle and hiking trail that presents a look at some of the key sites of human and geological heritage on the Marquette Iron Range. 46°31′18″N 87°33′53″W / 46.5217°N 87.5646°W / 46.5217; -87.5646 Marquette Iron Range The Marquette Iron Range is a deposit of iron ore located in Marquette County, Michigan in
252-521: The iron mines. The steepest gradient is 1.63%. Because of the location of the LS&I's Marquette docks, the railroad must cross the Dead River . The trestle is 565 feet (172 m) long and 104 feet (32 m) high. The LS&I's nicknames have included "Hayden's Scheme," "The Hook and Eye," "Little Sally and Imogene" (after the names of two daughters of H. R. Harris, its first general manager), and "Lazy, Slow, and Independent". Almost all
270-497: The iron ore mining company. From the start the railroad's primary business was the transport of iron ore from the Marquette Iron Range , west of Marquette, to docks on Lake Superior from which the ore could be shipped to steel mills on the lower Great Lakes . The primary towns on the iron range are Ishpeming and Negaunee, Michigan . In 1904 the railroad carried over 1.2 million short tons (1.1 Mt) of freight, and over 1.1 million short tons (1.00 Mt) of that
288-686: The line. The Big Bay spur was sold in the 1960s and Munising operations ended in the 1980s. A line between Humboldt and the Republic Mine (part of the Marquette Iron Range ) was abandoned and railbanked in 2004. Part of the line was reactivated by the Mineral Range Railroad in 2012 for a new mine, the Humboldt Mine. As of 2016, the Lake Superior & Ishpeming's primary remaining business continued to be
306-484: The transport of iron ore over a 16-mile (26 km) short line from the Tilden Mine south of Ishpeming, operated by Cleveland-Cliffs, to Lake Superior for transport. Tonnage was declining sharply due to the shutdown of the adjacent Empire Mine, also historically served by the LS&I. The Lake Superior & Ishpeming's historic main line operates on a relatively steep grade , called "The Hill", from Marquette to
324-536: Was iron ore. It had 489 ore cars, 14 locomotives, and 121 employees. In 1923 the LS&I Railway merged with the Munising, Marquette and Southeastern Railway (MM&SE), a short line running from Marquette 40 miles (64 km) east to Munising to form the LS&I Railroad . The LS&I's new spur ran through a section of the Upper Peninsula thickly forested with pulpwood , adding
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