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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

GLIMPSE OF THE PAST

Enormous scrapbook packed with news clippings, mementos from the 1920-30s

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 1/25/17

TOWER—Ralph and Sally Christopherson, of Lake Vermilion, came home from a recent trip to Seattle, carrying the weight of history. Literally.

Before returning home, an old friend, Carol Isaacson, …

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GLIMPSE OF THE PAST

Enormous scrapbook packed with news clippings, mementos from the 1920-30s

Posted

TOWER—Ralph and Sally Christopherson, of Lake Vermilion, came home from a recent trip to Seattle, carrying the weight of history. Literally.

Before returning home, an old friend, Carol Isaacson, had passed on an enormous scrapbook that held the collected news clippings and other mementos of one Henry A. Robinson, a mining engineer who worked on the Iron Range during the 1920s and 30s. It’s a large and dense volume, standing 18-inches high, 13-inches wide, measuring nearly four inches thick, and weighing nearly 20 pounds.

Robinson had no readily apparent connection to Isaacson, although the volume, somehow, had come to be in her late husband’s possession. After holding onto it for years, Isaacson had considered tossing it, but asked the Christophersons if they were interested in bringing it back to Minnesota.

After looking at it, they recognized the fascinating history it contained.

Scrapbooks, of course, can often be random, but they can also provide a glimpse into the lives, insights, and interests of those who take the time to assemble them. In the case of Henry Robinson, who went professionally by his initials H.A. Robinson, the commitment to recording select facets of history, particularly mining history, was remarkable.

Many of the book’s nearly 250 yellowed and brittle pages are layered with news stories, many of which were clipped from the pages of Skillings Mining Review, a now more-than-century old publication on the mining industry. His clippings include regular reports from mines all across the Lake Superior district, stories from mining conferences, and photos from many of the Mesabi Range mines where he used to work.

He also clipped annual reports on the taxes paid by Iron Range mining companies at the time, and it is a reminder of the degree to which the mines built the Iron Range and every public facility in the region in those days. According to the reports, the mines regularly paid 99 percent of the total city-wide property taxes in Mt. Iron, 95 percent of the taxes in Hibbing, 92 percent of the taxes in Ely, and 80 percent of the taxes in Virginia. They paid a somewhat more modest 65-70 percent of the taxes in Breitung Township at the time.

The era of heavy taxation on the mines came to an end in the 1960s, when Minnesota voters approved a change in the state’s constitution that provided for the implementation of a modest production tax on new taconite facilities, which were just starting to be built on the Range at the time. That provision largely exempted mining properties from the steep property taxes that they had paid for decades, and which had allowed Iron Range communities to build some of the most elaborate public facilities in the country all while maintaining massive city payrolls. In those days, in places like Hibbing, if you didn’t work in the mines, you most likely worked for the city.

Robinson, who resided variously in Virginia and Eveleth, had apparently begun working in the mining industry by the early 1920s. His scrapbook includes a card from 1922, indicating he had been certified for mine rescue operations, and that’s one of the earliest dates in the scrapbook.

Robinson was interested in politics, and like many corporate managers of his day, it appears he leaned Republican. He includes many clippings of photos of then-President Calvin Coolidge and his cabinet, as well as news reports about the president.

His clippings also include the election results of the 1928 presidential contest between Democrat Al Smith and Herbert Hoover, during which the Republican Hoover won Minnesota by 164,526 votes. With the exception of the 1972 Nixon landslide, it was the last time that Minnesota voted for the Republican in the presidential race. Hoover also won on the Iron Range in 1928, and it was the last time that a Republican presidential candidate claimed a victory in St. Louis County.

Robinson also followed local politics, and regularly included municipal election results from Eveleth, pulled from the Eveleth Clarion. On Nov. 3, 1925, Victor Essling narrowly edged August Bratulich, 1,423 to 1,354, for Eveleth Mayor. He won reelection in 1927 over Joseph Wilson before narrowly suffering defeat two years later.

Robinson, however, wasn’t all work and no play. He apparently took up golf in 1927, debuting his newfound hobby at the short-lived Everett Point Golf Course, on Lake Vermilion, where he scored a notably bad 92 on the nine-hole, par 35 course. At least you have to give him credit for honesty!

It appears he managed to hone his skills over the years, with subsequent scorecards, mostly from the Virginia Golf Course, indicating scores in the mid-40s on a nine-hole, par 36 course.

While scrapbooks are often focused on the personal, Robinson’s includes almost nothing of a personal nature. No apparent family photos, no mention of a wife, although it appears he had at least one daughter, Kathryn, who graduated from Eveleth High School in 1931. His collection includes a program from her graduation baccalaureate and news clippings of her exploits on the Eveleth swim team. He may have had another child, named Gael, whose homemade Easter greeting card to “Daddy” also made the cut for Robinson’s collection. His book also includes a Western Union telegram he received on April 11, 1934, informing him that his mother had died, in Alexandria Bay, New York. His extensive collection appears to include only a single tiny photo of himself, wearing a shirt, tie, vest, and fedora, taken at a work site somewhere on the Iron Range. His entries dwindle in the 1930s and disappear by the war years. There’s nothing to hint at his ultimate fate.

Indeed, the book mostly provides a detailed look at an industry and an era, and that probably makes it more valuable to those with an interest in the early years of mining on the Iron Range, which is extremely well documented in Robinson’s extensive clippings.

While the Christ-ophersons say they plan to spend more time going through the scrapbook, they expect they will eventually hand it over to a historical archive, such as the Tower-Soudan Historical Society or the Iron Range Research Center for permanent storage.