First House, Manganese, Minnesota, 1917 Postcard Reproduction

Description

Great image of the first home in Manganese, Minnesota, from 1917.

Manganese is a ghost town and former mining community in the U.S. state of Minnesota that was inhabited between 1912 and 1960. It was built in Crow Wing County on the Cuyuna Iron Range in sections 23 and 28 of Wolford Township, about 2 miles (3 km) north of Trommald, Minnesota. After its formal dissolution, Manganese was absorbed by Wolford Township; the former townsite is located between Coles Lake and Flynn Lake. First appearing in the U.S. Census of 1920 with an already dwindling population of 183, the village was abandoned by 1960.

Manganese was one of the last of the Cuyuna Range communities to be established, and was named after the mineral located in abundance near the town. Manganese was an incorporated community, built on land above the Trommald Formation, the main ore-producing unit of the North Range district of the Cuyuna Iron Range, unique due to the amount of manganese in part of the iron formation and ore. The Trommald Formation and adjacent Emily District are the largest resource of manganese in the United States. The community was composed of many immigrants who had fled the natural disasters and social and political upheavals in Europe during the decades before World War I.

Manganese was laid out with three north–south and five east–west streets. Concrete sidewalks and curbing lined the clay streets, which were never paved. At its peak around 1919, Manganese had two hotels, a bank, two grocery stores, a barbershop, a show hall, and a two-room school, and housed a population of nearly 600. After World War I, the population of Manganese went into steady decline as mining operations shut down; along with the quagmire of the clay streets due to spring rains, this led to the community’s eventual abandonment and formal dissolution in 1961. The privately owned land started to be resettled in 2017, as the old wooded lots were cleared and redeveloped as primitive campsites.

A bit of history, fantastic for dropping friends or family a note the old-fashioned way, and makes a great gift! This is a reproduction of the original 1917 postcard. 4″ x 6″ postcards

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