Tower-Soudan / Lake Vermilion Area History
Gold Island and the Vermilion Club
By the end of the 1880s, a substantial commerce was being carried on at Tower with its population peeking in 1888 at what some estimates say almost 5,000 residents with 1,500 men employed in the mines.
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The Development of Travel and Tourism
The Tower Depot served as a transportation resource for the Tower-Soudan area, but its main role was that its construction allowed early access to, and promotion of, the northern Minnesota lake region. After automobiles were invented and highways built starting in the 1930’s, much of the tourism for the area and statewide became highway-dependent. However, during the 50 years prior to that, Tower (and later Ely) were important early outposts due to their convenient rail access, with service of up to three trains a day. Tower bolstered this service with a busy city harbor, adjoining the depot, where passengers could disembark and then utilize boat services to get to Lake Vermilion’s thriving lakeside resorts, many of which were only accessible by water.
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Charlemagne Tower
Charlemagne Tower was the man who first proved the commercial potentialities of the Minnesota iron regions. But this was not his only achievement; in fact, he had already entered the charged millionaire circle before beginning the late 1870’s to acquire acreage on the Vermilion Range.
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STORIES FROM THE TOWER AND LAKEVIEW CEMETERIES
W. N. Shephard, early Tower resident, wrote about the first burial in the cemetery, at noon on July 7th, 1884: “About 12 o’clock P.M. July 7th, 1884, I arrived at Tower and was informed that the first Tower funeral services were held that afternoon over the remains of a man named Brown who had been killed in the Breitung Pit.”
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60° Below Zero
In a state where winter endurance stories are passed from generation to generation, the real tales of what happened on the coldest day on state record are perhaps just now taking on full dimension these decades later.
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Mother’s Day Fire 1992
The Mother’s Day Fire of 1992 is a true story of personal heroism played out in the midst of the fire’s fury. DNR AND Forest Service fire crews, volunteer fire departments, and neighbors all pitched in to save most of the homes along County Road 26, Highway 169 and elsewhere in the vicinity. It’s a story that needs to be told as part of our city’s historical record.
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The Lake Vermilion GOLD RUSH
Minnesota went wild that cold December day in 1865. Gold had been discovered up north by Lake Vermilion! The news was on everyone’s lips, in every tavern and every home people talked about the untold wealth that lay untapped in northern Minnesota.
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