Negaunee Mine, miners splitting fuse

Abstract

The Negaunee Mine was an underground iron mine near Negaunee, Michigan in the Marquette Range. The Mine opened in 1887 and was later operated by the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company. The Mine produced until 1949, when it was classified as exhausted. Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company was formed with the merger of two major iron mining companies on Michigan in 1891. The Company had a number of mines operating in the Upper Peninsula by the outbreak of World War I. By the 1940s the high grade iron ores mined underground were becoming depleted. The Company developed a process to concentrate low grade ores into iron ore pellets in the 1950s, and C.C.I.C.'s last underground iron mine closed in 1979.