Somehow it is true that nearly every great thing associated with the Lakes is unusual in some way--unusual to an astonishing degree, and the iron ore industry is not an exception. Probably not one person in ten thousand knows that one lone county in this great continent is the very backbone of the steel industry in the United States. This county is in Minnesota. It is the county of St. Louis, and is about as big as the State of Massachusetts. Not much more than twenty years ago it was a howling wilderness. Even a dozen years ago the Mesaba bore but little evidence of the presence of man. Now this country is alive with industry. Buried in the wilderness which still exists are thriving towns; where a short time ago deer and bear wandered unmolested, is now the din of innumerable locomotives, the rumbling of thousands of trains, the screeching of whistles, and the constant groaning of steam shovels. There is not a richer county on the face of the earth. In it are over one hundred mines, from which one hundred and twenty-three million tons of ore have been taken since Charlemagne Tower, now Ambassador to Germany, brought down the first carload to Duluth in 1884. These mines afford livelihood for more than two hundred thousand people, and because of them St. Louis County possesses the greatest freight traffic road in existence--the Duluth, Mesaba, and Northern Railway--which, in 1907, carried about fourteen million tons of ore from the mines to the docks. [Illustration: A Coal Dock at Superior, Wisconsin. The pile of coal is 1400 feet long and 30 feet high.] This comparatively little corner of Minnesota practically runs the whole State in so far as expenses are concerned. To administer the affairs of the State, including all of its activities, costs about two million six hundred thousand dollars, and, as inconceivable as it may seem, the three railroads in the ore region pay in taxes one fifth of this sum. They pay one third of the total railroad tax of the State, notwithstanding the fact that some of the greatest lines in the country centre at Minneapolis and St. Paul. To this must be added about seven hundred thousand dollars paid in direct taxes by the mines themselves, so that the iron ore which the ships of the Lakes bring down to Eastern ports each season pays almost half of the total expense of running the State of Minnesota!