The Iron Range Interpretive Center is the main museum covering the history of the Mesabi Iron Range — the 110-mile band of iron ore deposits that made Minnesota the centre of American steel production from the 1890s through the mid-20th century. The exhibits cover the geology, the open-pit mining operations, and the immigrant communities — Finnish, Slovenian, Croatian, Italian — who came to work the mines and built the distinctive culture of the Range.
The museum is well done and gives genuine context for the landscape you see as you drive through the region: the enormous red and grey open pits, the waste dumps, the ore-hauling trucks. If you are visiting Hibbing's Hull-Rust-Mahoning Mine viewpoint (about 30 miles west), this is good preparation. There is also a genealogy research center used extensively by descendants of the immigrant mining families.