Use of Mining Timber on the 

 Iron Ranges 



By Hugo C. Nelson, Forest Ranger 



WHILE lumbering in its broad sense principally the 

 cutting of timber, and the sawing and marketing of 

 lumber is a common subject and one which the aver- 

 age person is more or less familiar with, the same might 

 also be said of some of the other semi-lumbering industries, 

 such as the tie, post and pole operations and the pulpwood 

 business. Still there is another branch of the lumbering in- 

 dustry of which very little has ever been written, and outside 

 of the territory tributary to Northern Minnesota and the iron 

 ranges very little is known save in a general way. This is 

 the mining timber operations that are carried on every win- 

 ter in the North woods. 



Upon the fact that suitable timber could be had near at 

 hand has depended to a great extent the rapid development 

 of the immense iron industry of this state, which most people 

 regard in a matter-of-fact-way, but the development of which 

 would have been a serious matter had not this been a tim- 

 bered country. I am speaking of the underground mines in 

 this connection as they were the first operating mines in the 

 state and continued so for a number of years until in some 

 locations the ground, or overburden, was stripped and open- 

 pit mining became the proper procedure where the iron de- 

 posits lay near the surface of the ground and the ore removed 

 by steam shovels. 



Open Pit Miners Also Use Timber. 



We, therefore, find two distinct and different ways of iron 

 ore mining, viz.: underground and open pit mining. While 

 the operators of the former class of mines are wholly de- 

 pendent on the use of different kinds of mining timber in 

 their operations and are therefore the principal users of this 

 article, the open pit miners are not altogether able to get 

 along without timber, as they ofttimes sink shafts either in 

 the bottom or the sides of the pit to reach some smaller ore 

 body, or "pocket," as it is commonly termed, which would 



