ABSTRACT
The first signs of an emerging, man-made American landscape of open-pit mines and waste dumps appeared in the late 19th century when the then vast deposits of high-grade iron ore of the Lake Superior region were first tapped. The subsequent development of diesel- and electric-powered earth-moving equipment accelerated the mining activity and provided the means for expanding the scale of operation. Unplanned land use patterns and land forms proliferated into a discordant environment, frequently described as “man-made badlands.” The great future of the Lake Superior Iron Ore Region, including northern Wisconsin, now appears to lie in the vast deposits of low-grade ores commonly called taconites, containing 25 to 30 percent iron. Taconite mining, like the mining of high-grade ore, is essentially a quarrying operation. The ore body is exposed by stripping off the covering mantle of glacial till or overburden, which can vary in depth from practically nothing to about 100 feet.
