THE NORTHERN PACIFIC ROUTE. 15 
range*in 1884. The great Mesabi range was opened in 1892 and the 
Cuyuna range in 1911. 
The values of the products of the State are approximately as fol- 
lows: Manufactures (1909), $409,000,000; agriculture (1909), $275,- 
000,000; mining (1913), $70,000,000. 
The locations of the centers of commerce and industry in this State, 
as in many others that were settled in the early days, were determined 
largely by the availability of water transportation. Thus St. Paul, 
which stands at the head of navigation on Mississippi River, and 
Duluth, which is at the upper end of Lake Superior, were the principal 
points. The use of Mississippi River as a commercial highway has 
gradually diminished, until to-day it has little or no effect on the com- 
merce of the Northwest; but St. Paul and Minneapolis still continue 
to form a center for all the northern transcontinental railroads and 
also for those that connect central Canada with the United States. 
Lake Superior still holds its own as a water route for heavy freight— 
iron ore and grain going east and coal and manufactured articles going 
west—and the places at which most of this traffic concentrates are 
Duluth and Superior, at the extreme western point of the lake. 
On leaving the Union Station at St. Paul (see sheet 1, p- 20) the 
Northern Pacific Railway follows a small ravine almost due north for 
about 2 miles, gradually climbing from an altitude 
of 732 feet at the station to more than 900 feet at 
the highest point within the city limits. In passing 
over this part of the road the traveler unacquainted 
with glacial topography will have an opportunity to become familiar 
with some of its peculiarities—its knobs and basins composed of mate- 
rials which the moving ice carried or pushed along and deposited near 
its margin. 
The region was at one time covered (as shown on the map of Minne- 
sota on sheet 3, p. 32) by what is here called the middle ice sheet, 
which, as it came down from the north, brought into this region clay 
and fragments of red rock from the country north of Lake Superior. 
This body of ice extended southward beyond St. Paul and on melting 
left its load of reddish clay, sand, gravel, and bowlders, commonly 
known as drift, spread over the surface like a blanket. Later another 
St. Paul. 
Elevation 732 feet. 
Population 214,744,2 
‘The term range, as applied to a de- 
posit of iron ore or to the ore and the rocks 
with which the ore is associated, is lim- 
ited to the Lake Superior region. It 
doubtless resulted from the fact that in 
the first districts developed the rocks as- 
sociated with the ore are hard and form 
ridges or low ranges. From these districts 
the term has been carried to the other 
deposits of iron ore in the region, until 
now they are all known as ranges, even if 
the surface is flat and swampy. 
2 The figures for population in this book 
are those of the United States Census of 
1910. For unincorporated places the fig- 
ures give the population of the election 
precinct, township, or like unit; such 
figures are marked with an asterisk ¢*). 
