The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 1890–1910
Railroads, docks and steel freighters made Mesabi ore America's steel supply line
From 1893, private railroads and huge ore docks fed steel lake freighters that by 1900 moved 75% of America's iron ore.
Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railway · Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines
the move
When the Merritt family found merchantable ore on Minnesota's Mesabi Range in 1890, there was no way to move it: railroads refused to build in, and lower-Lake steel mills were hundreds of miles away. The Merritts incorporated the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railway and, when the connecting line failed, decided to build all the way to Duluth with their own ore docks.
The railway and docks — then the largest on the Lakes — were ready in July 1893, but the Panic of 1893 crushed the family's finances. Rockefeller's $2 million kept the enterprise alive, and he took control of the consolidated Lake Superior Iron Mines in 1894, leasing the properties to Carnegie Steel in 1896. By 1900 larger steel freighters hauled bulk cargo at a fraction of the old rates, Lake Superior mines produced 75 percent of America's iron ore, and by 1910 ore was about half of all Great Lakes bulk cargo.
why it works
- A dedicated railroad opened the Mesabi to Lake Superior docks.
- Giant gravity docks loaded ships fast enough for a continuous flow.
- Big steel freighters cut bulk transport cost to a fraction of previous rates.
- Scale made cheap steel possible for the whole US industrial economy.
what transfers
A stranded resource is a logistics problem before it is a market problem — build the connecting infrastructure and the commodity's value unlocks.
what came after
The ore trade kept growing: Rockefeller's lines became the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway, ore docks multiplied at Duluth and Superior, and the Hulett unloader later mechanized unloading at the lower lakes. The Great Lakes ore fleet remained the steel industry's supply line for most of the twentieth century.
references
- Lake Superior Iron Ore Docks — National Register of Historic Places nomination
- The Merritt family helped put the 'iron' in Iron Range
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