Time Machine: Allamakee County’s Iron Hill

CEDAR RAPIDS - Cedar Rapids Mayor John M. Redmond visited the new iron fields in Allamakee County, a few miles north of Waukon, in December 1900, the same year George Nehrhood organized and incorporated the Waukon Iron. Co.

Redmond encouraged the Commercial Club to investigate the new industry.

He told a Gazette reporter, 'When I visited Waukon I was invited to inspect the mines, and expected to find prospects, but found there extensive excavations, with mills in operation and a very considerable quantity of ore in sight. There is a great deal of enthusiasm in and around Waukon about these mines, and people are confident that the hills a few miles north are full of ore. A company has been organized and has already expended a considerable sum of money and the fact of an iron mine in northeastern Iowa is established. ...

'I know nothing about mines or mining, and especially iron mines, or the expense of operation of a smelter, but certainly we are near enough to coal fields and near enough to iron mines not to let the matter go by without further investigation ... in my opinion, Cedar Rapids, in justice to herself, should at least investigate before turning down the prospect for the location of a smelter here.”

Charles Barnard, who came to Waukon in 1865 from a Pennsylvania iron region, recognized that there was an ore deposit about two miles north of town. The area known as Iron Hill was the highest point in Allamakee County and one of the highest in Iowa at 1,320 feet above sea level. In 1899, developers leased the land and began digging an open pit mine at 1,250 feet above sea level.

Nehrhood bought the lease a year later and built a plant that could wash 300 tons of ore per 10-hour shift, but the railroad was several miles away in Waukon. The expense of transporting the ore made this first attempt a failure.

The Missouri Iron Co. of St. Louis stepped in June 1907, announcing it would locate an extensive plant at Waukon Junction, the small unincorporated town that sprung up near the mines, in order to take advantage of a water supply.

The mining period was Waukon Junction's heyday. It had a hotel, two dance halls, two stores, a school house and the iron ore processing plant.

In 1916, a traveler could eat his supper, bed down for the night and have breakfast at the Waukon Junction hotel and the bill was only $1.50. A railroader working the Milwaukee branch to Waukon could get the same for $1.35. It was a bustling place, serving 50 to 75 for supper. The hotel's proprietors were Mr. and Mrs. John Atall. Mrs. Atall did the lion's share of the work at the hotel because her husband worked first on the railroad and then as a machinist at the processing plant. The Atalls operated the hotel until 1922. Sometime after it was sold, the little hotel was destroyed by fire.

More than $1 million was spent by Missouri Iron in developing the mines, equipping the plant and building a four-mile rail spur connecting to the Waukon branch line of the Milwaukee Road.

The Waukon deposits were recognized as the richest in Iowa. The ore was treated electrically to eliminate impurities at the site, then shipped to smelters in St. Louis.

After several profitable years, rising costs, falling ore prices and competition from the huge Mesabi fields in northern Minnesota led to the mines' closure in 1917.

The company was reincorporated under the name Mississippi Valley Iron Co., but some of the machinery already had been removed. A caretaker stayed on the grounds for a number of years as the buildings crumbled. When he died, no one protected the property from vandals. Eventually, the tracks were dismantled and sold for scrap to a Cedar Rapids company.

Rumors circulated in September 1941 that the mines might reopen when an agent of the Milwaukee Railroad spent several days there, taking samples of the deposits and talking about the national scarcity of iron and steel in connection to the defense program.

Those rumors were quashed when in December the iron mine properties were finally sold to the Lefton Corp. of St. Louis. The Mississippi Valley Iron Co. was in receivership. The sale attracted about 20 jobbers in reclaimed steel equipment, but the proceeds of the sale came in far below expectations. The equipment still in the buildings after 20 years sold for $33,430.50, far below its appraised value of nearly $54,000.

The 218 acres of real estate brought only $3,500. Patrick F. Devitt bought the property for stock feeding.

After more than 30 years, the 10,000 tons of ore taken from the mines and piled nearby were sold to the Marquette Cement Co. of Des Moines in June 1958. The ore was hauled to Waukon by the Cooney Construction Co., where it was loaded on more than 200 rail cars and shipped to Des Moines at a rate of twelve 55-ton cars per month.

The iron mine property was sold again at auction on Nov. 28, 1970, this time in four separate parcels.