4 Aug 2022 - Bob Dylan's House, Greyhound Bus Museum, Hull Rust Mahoning Iron Ore Mine

 4 Aug

Busy day.  We drove about 20 miles west to explore the town of Hibbing MN.  We started with a drive-by of Robert Allen Zimmerman's (Bob Dylan) childhood home.  For those of you that don't recognize that name, Bob Dylan was an American singer-songwriter, born in 1941 in Duluth and moved to Hibbing MN when he was six years old until he was 18.  His career took off in 1961 and continues today. He toured and played solo and with many different artists.  He was also in a musical group called the Traveling Wilbury's.  His list of accolades is extensive including Nobel Prize for Literature, ten Grammys, a Golden Globe, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and on and on.  

His childhood home is nothing special,  in a very middle-class area of town.  If it were not for the signs we would not picked it out of the neighborhood.  

7th Avenue East in Hibbing, the street in front of his house, was named in his honor in 2005

From there we headed north to the Greyhound Bus Museum.  This stop is in honor of a friend and military comrade, the late MSgt (ret) Jimmy Murrell.  Jim was a former Marine, worked for the State of Iowa in the Motor Vehicle Dispatch office, was a driver for Greyhound Bus for many years, and was fulltime with the Iowa Air National Guard as a 291X0 (later 491x0) Telecommunications Specialist where he worked in the base comm center.  

R.I.P Jimmy Murrell.  Semper Fi

The Greyhound Bus Company started out here in Hibbing which is recognized as the "birthplace of the bus industry".  It all started back in 1914 two local guys decided they wanted to get into the automobile business.  So they purchased two 2013 Hupmobiles from Detroit with the idea of selling them. 

A Hupmobile that could carry seven

They started to give free rides.  Many wanted to ride but no one wanted to buy, so they started to charge for the rides.  Prior to that, in the late 1800's the mining industry took off here when iron ore was discovered under the ground occupied by the buildings in Hibbing.  So in 1918 they moved the whole town to the south, including physically moving houses, businesses, etc!  Then the mine workers needed a way to get from the town to the mine, and townspersons needed a way to get from Hibbing to nearby Alice, and the inter-city bus industry was born!

We arrived at the museum and were the only vehicle in the parking lot.  Inside we were greeted by a volunteer who collected a nominal fee and told us about the museum. In the entrance was a replica Greyhound bus ticket office.  The walls of the entrance were covered with photos and other historical items. 

The volunteer queued up an introductory movie for us.  The movie was appropriately delivered in a small theatre that resembled the inside of a Greyhound bus, including bus seating!  The movie was a bit dated, but very well done and very informative covering the Greyhound Story from 1914 to 1987.

After the movie we continued on through the museum.  The first area included the Hupmobile vehicle shown above and thousands of other Greyhound artifacts.

Toy Greyhound coaches

How it all started

Greyhound bus uniforms

Caps, pins, belt buckles - everything Greyhound!

We then proceeded through a bus stop turnstile into the next room which housed many Greyhound buses, in awesome condition!  Most of them you could enter the door and step up to look into the passenger area but were held short of the driver's area.

A tribute to the Red Cross and our Nation's service men and women.  Greyhound bus transported them everywhere and contributed to the war effort!

This 1956 "Scenicruiser" was the first bus with a raised area for better viewing

Finally, the name.  The company started as Mesaba Transportation Company.  Apparently a bus route that started between Fon Du Lac and Madison WI.  The owner of the line had two 16 valve touring cars rebuilt by Mesaba into coach-type buses.  As these coaches traveled down main street in Fon Du Lac, the reflection in the store windows looked just like a "Greyhound".  So he had the sides lettered as such and later the motor transit corporation adopted it as their trademark and renamed themselves "Greyhound".  So now you know!

We left the museum and made our way to what we (and Google Maps) thought was a viewing area for the Hull Rust Mahoning Mine. As we approached the entrance it was fenced off and locked.  The volunteer at the Greyhound bus museum had said they had changed the viewing area because they we actually now mining the area in front of the old one. 

 So we back-tracked a bit and followed the signs to the new viewing area.  We following the road a ways up the hill to the new location.

Wow is the best way to describe it, or actually it is described as "the Grand Canyon of the North"! This massive mine is the largest open-pit iron ore mine in the world.  It was formed from as many as 40 separate mines combined over the past 120 years. 

This picture does not do it justice!

This panoramic also does not really show how massive this mine is!

The mine along with Hibbing Taconite measures approximately 5000 acres, with a maximum length of 8 miles and a maximum width of 3.5 miles.  At it's deepest point it is about 800 feet deep.  They say that more than 1.4 billion tons of earth have been removed from this site.  The ability for the United States to prevail in World Wars I and II was greatly enhanced by Minnesota's ore reserves.  The iron ore was converted to steel and used to build munitions and other equipment that supported the was effort.

More than 800 million tons of iron ore have been shipped from the Hull Rust Mahoning mine.  At peak production, more than one fourth of the ore mined in the U.S. came from here.

The first mining lease was issued here in 1891 and mining commenced the following year.  In 1893 a railroad was built between Hibbing nd Duluth to transport the ore to Lake Superior and then shipped east to steel mills for processing.

There are several "viewing areas" at the top of this hill.  The area is fenced to prevent anyone from falling.  

The main viewing area next to the gift shop

The three-tiered green area straight ahead toward the top is a "triple point", or triple divide called the "Hill of Three Waters".  It is sacred ground for the Chippewa Indians and therefore not mined. It is the place where two continental divides intersect and water drains into three different watersheds. "Five widely-recognized triple divides exist in the United States, including: Triple Divide Peak, Montana, The Hill of Three Waters, Minnesota, Three Waters Mountain, Wyoming, an unnamed hilltop near Gold, Pennsylvania, and the unofficially named Headwaters Hill, Colorado."

Drilling operations can be seen in this picture.  Look at how tiny those massive vehicles look!

Eastern viewing area

Another view of the drilling operations

Mining areas that have been reclaimed

Elevated viewing area.  The gift shop trailer and the main viewing area is visible behind us

In addition to the viewing areas there are equipment displays that are very impressive, including massive buckets used to scoop the ore, and monstrous trucks used to transport it. 

This is a 35 cubic yard bucket!

Slightly smaller 18 cubic yard bucket equivalent of 

roughly 400 bushel baskets of dirt or broken rock

A bit used to drill holes they fill with explosives to blast the ore

170-ton production truck.  In 1975 it cost $451,000 and it operated for 110,000 hours or an equivalent 12.5 continuous years.  Over it's life this truck hauled over 30 million tons or ore or waste.  The wheel motors are electric powered by a generator driven by a 16 cylinder/1600 horsepower General Motors diesel engine  Top speed is 32 mph and has a fuel capacity of 800 gallons. The radiator holds 150 gallons of coolant.   Maximum gross vehicle weight is rated at 630,000 lbs!

  

Doreen in front of a 10.5 ft in diameter 50-ply tire on the 170-ton production truck.  

Each tire costs ~$7500 with a complete set at $60,000.  Tread depth is three inches!

Not much room in the cab, which is two-stories up!

This is a 240-ton production truck.  

The tires are 12 feet across!

 That's it for today.  Tomorrow we will either head for Chisholm and the mining museum, or to the hockey hall of fame.