TACONITE HARBOR

NAME: Taconite Harbor COUNTY: Cook ROADS: 2WD GRID: 2 CLIMATE: Winter snowy & cold...summer delightful BEST TIME TO VISIT: Any time!

COMMENTS: Easily found along MN 61 (North Shore Highway) just before reaching the burg of Schroeder. The tall red & white smokestack of the power plant is visible for several miles as you travel up the highway. REMAINS: Street layout and a handful of streetlights.

The town of Taconite Harbor was built in the early 1950s to house workers at the nearby power plant. The plant was built to supply electricity to the taconite processing plants inland on Minnesota's Iron Range. Ships would dock at the plant and unload coal to power it...then the empty ships were reloaded with taconite pellets bound for steel mills in Gary, Indiana & elsewhere. The decline in taconite production and increased automation of the harbor & power plant resulted in the town of Taconite Harbor being dismantled. Homes were sold & moved away and just the street layout remains. There is a small horseshoe-shaped harbor nearby that was used to "raft up" large numbers of logs for towing across Lake Superior to paper mills in Wisconsin. An interpretive center nearby tells the full story. Submitted by: John Messenger

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