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Discovered in 1844, First Production in 1846.
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 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.
The Marquette Iron Range is a deposit of iron ore located in Marquette County, Michigan in 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.
Early mining used open-pit mining methods, but was replaced with underground mining by 1880.
Capitalists from Cleveland played a key role in the development of the Marquette Iron Range, and the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company (previously known as Cliffs Natural Resources) acquired a controlling influence on the range by 1890.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette_Iron_Range
Mining Companies in Marquette-
- The Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company
- Oliver Iron Mining Co.
- Lake Superior Iron Co.
- Republic Iron & Steel Co.