Manuscripts Collection
The Duluth and Iron Range Railway Company (D&IR) was incorporated on December 21, 1874, by an Ontonagon, Michigan-based syndicate headed by Peter Mitchell that was exploring for iron ore on the eastern end of what would eventually become the Mesabi Iron Range. The organizers obtained a land grant from the Minnesota legislature. The company's charter called for the construction of a railroad line from a point near present-day Babbitt to Duluth, Minnesota by February 1879. The Mitchell group, however, never built any trackage.
Meanwhile, Charlemagne Tower of Philadelphia and his associates had begun acquiring iron ore lands on the Vermillion Iron Range, especially in the vicinity of present-day Tower and Soudan, Minnesota. Most of the desired ore properties were assembled into Tower's Minnesota Iron Company by the early 1880s. Tower needed a railroad over which to transport his ore to Lake Superior ports, and in 1882 gained control of the as-yet-unbuilt D&IR and its land grant. The terminus of the proposed line was changed from Duluth to Agate Bay (Two Harbors), Minnesota, and construction was begun in 1883. The company's line from Two Harbors to Soudan was completed in July 1884, and the first iron ore shipment from mines he developed at Soudan arrived at Two Harbors on July 31.
Control of the D&IR was acquired from the Tower group by Illinois Steel Company interests in 1887, a syndicate that included Henry H. Porter, head of the Illinois Steel Company; Marshall Field; Cyrus McCormick; John D. and William Rockefeller; and Jay C. Morse, of Union Steel Company. The railroad became a part of United States Steel Corporation in 1901 when Federal Steel Company, successor to Illinois Steel Company, was acquired by a group of capitalists headed by Elbert H. Gary and J.P. Morgan, who combined it with Carnegie Steel Company to form United States Steel Corporation. In 1927 the D&IR served iron mines located at Aurora, Babbitt, Biwabik, Colby, Ely, Eveleth, Largo, McComber, McKinley, Mariska, Pettit, Sparta, Tower Junction (Soudan), Virginia, and Winton, Minnesota.
The Duluth Missabe and Northern Railway Company (DM&N) was incorporated on February 11, 1891 by the Merritt interests to build a railroad line connecting their iron ore properties located at present-day Mountain Iron and Biwabik, Minnesota and Duluth. Construction of the railroad from Stony Brook Junction on the Duluth and Winnipeg Railway to Mountain Iron was completed in October of 1892. The first shipment from Mountain Iron over the line was made late in October of 1892. The final leg of the journey from Stony Brook to Duluth (about 26 miles) was made over the D&W.
The Merritts lost control of the DM&N in 1894 to the Rockefeller interests, and it became a segment of their Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines Company. John D. Rockefeller leased all his iron ore properties, including the DM&N, to Carnegie Steel Corporation in 1896. The DM&N became a part of United States Steel Corporation in 1901 when a group of capitalists headed by Elbert H. Gary and J.P. Morgan bought Carnegie's steel company and combined it with their holdings in the Federal Steel Company to form the United States Steel Corporation. In 1927 the DM&N served iron mines located at Eveleth, Virginia, Mountain Iron, Buhl, Shenango, Chisholm, Hibbing, Arcturus, and Coleraine, Minnesota.
The Duluth and Iron Range Railroad Company and the Duluth, Missabe and Northern, both owned by United States Steel Corporation, were operated as one system from 1901 to 1937, although they were not formally merged. The DM&N leased the properties of the D&IR in early 1930. On July 1, 1937 the DM&N and the Spirit Lake Transfer Railway Company consolidated to form the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway Company (DM&IR). In March 1938 the property and assets of the D&IR and the Interstate Transfer Railway Company were transferred to the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range. Interstate Transfer was subsequently dissolved on June 28, 1938, and the D&IR was dissolved July 7, 1938. The surviving company, The Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range, had two separate operating divisions: The Missabe Division, operating the former DM&N trackage on the western portion of the system, and the Iron Range Division, operating the former D&IR trackage on the eastern portion of the system.
Soft high-grade iron ore began to run out on the Vermilion and Missabe iron ranges in the mid-1950s, and at that time development of northeastern Minnesota's taconite industry began in earnest. With the passage of the Taconite Amendment in 1963 the construction of taconite plants along the DM&IR proceeded with the Eveleth Taconite Company's plant at Forbes, Minnesota coming into operation around 1965 and United States Steel Corporation's large Minntac taconite pellet plant at Mountain Iron beginning operation in October 1967.
In 1988 the DM&IR, a wholly-owned subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation, was sold to Transtar Inc., Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Transtar was a holding company owned in part by the Blackstone Group and USX Corporation (formerly known as United States Steel Corporation). In 2001 the railroad became part of Great Lakes Transportation, a privately-held transportation holding company with principal operations in railroad freight and transportation, Great Lakes shipping, and inland river barging.
In 2002 the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway was said to be the largest iron ore handling railroad in North America, with 212 miles of track. Its primary mission was to move ore from Minnesota's Missabe Range taconite plants to DM&IR dock facilities at Duluth and Two Harbors, or to connecting railroads at Superior, Wisconsin.
The collection is divided into four record series: Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range Railway Company records (71 boxes); records of the Duluth and Iron Range Railway Company (25 boxes) and the Duluth, Missabe and Northern Railway Company (11 boxes); and records of subsidiary companies (7 boxes).
The greatest portion of the material consists of DM&IR employee "Personal Record Files" (58 boxes). Other employee-related materials include employment record books, wage schedules, and files concerned with collective bargaining. There are balance sheets, operating statements, ledgers, payroll records, valuation records, and other financial records; some legal files, including several case files involving Leonidas Merritt of the DM&N (1890s), and legal correspondence concerning the DM&N's involvement in and liability for the Cloquet Fire of 1918; some maps and posters; track profiles and other engineering records of the D&IR; and D&IR land records, including land deeds (State of Minnesota to D&IR; 1888-1918), a valuation report (1919), and information about land sales (1891-1925). There are minutes of directors and stockholders meetings; some correspondence of Duluth & Iron Range president Horace Johnson (1912-1914, 1922); and information about D&IR-owned tugboats and ore docks. There are approximately six inches (0.5 cu. ft.) of photographs, including 8 x 10 enlargements and glass lantern slides, located at various places within the collection.
There are records of subsidiary firms Agate Land Company (Superior, Wis.); Interstate Transfer Railway Company (Superior, Wis.); Spirit Lake Transfer Railway Company (Duluth); Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines (Duluth and New York City); and Proctor Water Power and Light Company (Proctor, Minn.). This material consists largely of minutes of directors and stockholders meetings as well as some financial records, correspondence, and litigation-related files.
These documents are organized into the following sections:
Payroll records (1884-1970) are in the Minnesota Historical Society manuscript collections.
Employee newletters and magazines are in the Minnesota Historical Society serials collection.
Accession number: 13,419
Processed by: John M. Wickre, July 1986 and June 1987
Catalog ID number: 09-00320482
Horace Johnson was a president of the Duluth & Iron Range.
Boxes 4-10 contain small rolled track profiles, some with map views and some without. In the following box list numbers such as "53-57" refer to individual subseries, each of which contains several profiles.
The volume is labeled "1001-3600."
These are schedules for patrolmen, telephone, locomotive and train yard employees.
These agreements concern land sales, mortgages, track construction (both main line and side tracks), and water agreements.
This file includes leases, deeds and other land agreements, permits, and agreements with news vendors, express agents, and other railroads.
These involve the Oliver Iron Mining Company, Weckey lands, and Ely Lake.
This material includes enginemen's schedules, 1911, 1923-1924; trainmen's schedules, 1903-1917; trainmen's agreements, 1928; safety rules, 1918, 1930; employee work rules, 1921-1936; and transportation rules, undated and 1923.
These files include correspondence and memoranda, legal briefs, a map, and other materials relating to investigations and lawsuits following the great conflagration of October 12, 1918, commonly referred to as "the Cloquet Fire," in which several thousand square miles of territory along the lines of the Duluth, Missabe and Northern, Great Northern, Soo Line, and Northern Pacific railroads was burned by fires sparked by passing trains.
This case is related to the ownership of Wisconsin Point.
This file includes information about bonds and a St. Louis River bridge.
This was an iron ore lands fraud case.
This file includes papers and photographs related to Oliver Iron Mining Company president William J. Olcott (d.1935). Olcott was also a president of the Duluth, Missabe and Northern Railway Company (1901-).
This includes plat maps, right of way maps, structures drawings, interlocking facilities drawings, and track diagrams.
These files relate mainly to wage and work rule negotiations, and include many printed materials.
These files include personal and employment information on individual employees and typically include such items as applications for employment; notice of promotion, suspension, dismissal, resignation, etc. forms; quarterly reports of progress made by apprentices; and correspondence and memoranda related to individual employees. There is information about positions held, promotions, terminations, retirements, and employee and retiree deaths.
These files are organized alphabetically within numerical subseries.
These files are organized alphabetically by surname, but are not in alphabetical order within each letter group. Much of the material is not in folders. The file set is incomplete.