Hill-Annex Mine State Park

Hill-Annex Mine State Park

—Calumet, MN—

When you drive into the city of Calumet, MN you know you are near the home of the Hill-Annex Mine State Park.  They are so proud of it they put it on the water tower.  This is a really cute town in a really pretty part of the state.  It is managed by nearby Scenic State Park.

Hill Annex Mine State Park is a closed iron ore open pit mine that was open for most of the 20th century.  They have a building you can see and offer tours on the weekends; however, we did not have enough time to do a tour, so this park will go on the "short list" of places we want to see again and do the mine tour.

When we got to the park the parking lot was pretty full, and we decided it was a nice place to have a picnic and play on the jungle gym for a while – these long drives can be tough on Marcus, so we try to let him play when the opportunity arises.

After lunch Luke went to check out the details on the tour (and found out we did not have enough time) while Marcus and I started the geocache.  Since Marcus has tiny legs it takes him a lot longer to get places than either Luke or I.    Where the state park sits is also a stopping place for the Mesabi Trail.  This run right next to the park and is a fantastic, wide, paved biking trail that was quite busy the day we were there.  One of the different things about this park is that it is completely fenced off from the surrounding environment.  I think that is probably in order to prevent people from danger.

Since the park is fenced up it looked like the geocache was actually going to be on the trail.

We could see across the grass that the GPS was pointing directly to the sign.

The next location was not far – only about 500 feet up the trail – and Marcus found the ammo box very quickly.  It helped that there was a pretty obvious trail leading to it!

Marcus was super excited because he took a puzzle from the geocache box and this kept him busy for most of trip.

Marcus LOVES Geocaching...  This is a view from the Mesabi Trail here.

A view of the trail again.

Hill-Annex Mine State Park

Since we completed the geocache in under our allotted one hour, we had a bit of time to check out a little bit of the park.

Marcus and Luke hung out in the "Big Scoop" which was used to remove Iron Ore from the range.

 We will be heading back to this park another time.  It was really fun, and I really want to do the mine tour.  My Grandpa Johnson worked in the mines, and I wish I knew a lot more about them and what he did in them.  This trip was a bit like heading down memory lane as I remembered when my grandparents lived up in the area.  What a great part of the state.

And here is our bird card – yet another woodpecker!  I had never realized that there were so many different species of them.

  

 Now back on the road...

We did spend a bit of time inside the mining headquarters building where the ranger station was.  It was kept as it was when operations were still going in 1978.  The accessibility and grade of ore eventually diminished to the point when it was no longer as economical to keep the mine in operation as compared to looking elsewhere for iron ore when it ceased operations in '78.  The headquarters building is actually very impressive with tons of displays and is highly recommended.  I would dedicate a good hour for the main building to visit the business offices, mining planning rooms, schoolhouse room, and chemistry labs all upstairs.  Everything has a kind of "frozen in time" feel to it.  Very neat.