The Iron Range and Its Economy
From a geological perspective, the Iron Range in Minnesota includes these four major iron deposits:
- Mesabi Range, the largest iron range, largely within Itasca and St. Louis counties;
- Vermilion Range, northeast of the Mesabi, in St. Louis and Lake counties;
- Gunflint Range is in the extreme northern portion of Cook County and extends into Canada; and
- Cuyuna Range, southwest of the Mesabi, largely within Crow Wing County.
The large size of the Mesabi Range leads many Minnesotans to equate it directly with the Iron Range, in exclusion of the other, smaller ranges.
The Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB), sometimes known simply as "the I-triple-R-B" or Iron Range Resources, is an economic development agency funded partly by taxes levied by the state on taconite-producing companies and charged with creating jobs. Detractors consider it an example of pork barrel politics.
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Famous quotes containing the words iron, range and/or economy:
“The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not send men to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty,... it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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