We’ve been driving up and down Highway 61 on Lake Superior’s North Shore more than usual lately to deliver and retrieve my photos that were on display in Grand Marais. On one trip, I noticed a river that flowed underneath the highway. No sign sported the river’s name. Looking landward as we whizzed past, I spotted a double culvert bridge about a hundred yards away that the river flowed through. Was that a waterfall behind one of the culverts? The scene was intriguing and not one I’d ever seen photographed by established North Shore photographers. I made note of the location and vowed to stop on our next trip.

That “next trip” was last weekend. On our way back to Duluth from Grand Marais, we stopped near the mystery river, which is near Taconite Harbor. The harbor’s a place where mining companies used to load taconite (iron-ore pellets mined and made on Minnesota’s Iron Range) from rail cars into ships bound for steel-making plants in Michigan and Illinois.

We parked our car in a driveway entrance that was blocked by a gate overgrown by saplings. Although the driveway had a fire number on it, that gate obviously hadn’t been opened in years, so we weren’t too worried about blocking access.

We walked across the highway and, as cars rushed past, took a short jaunt to the river. We hopped the guardrail in a likely looking spot and soon found a faint game trail. The trail also could have been made by anglers. We found out later that part of the river is considered an “Aquatic Management Area” allowing angler access by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

It’s spring and we’d had a heavy rain recently, so the shallow river splashed with gusto over reddish-gray rocks. I clambered along the banks, camera in hand, taking photos at spots that offered a good vantage. But I was impatient to get to my goal: the double culvert up the hill, and that waterfall behind it.

Russ went ahead while I took photos. When I caught up to him at the railroad bridge with the culverts, he’d had time to look up the name of the river on his phone. We were looking at Two Island River, a 15-mile waterway. There’s not much info out there about it, but Wikipedia says the river is named for two lake islands near its mouth.

As you can probably tell, there was a waterfall behind the culverts. A very nice one, too. The steep angle of the sun and rising mist from the falls made for some blurry spots in my photos, but I managed to get a few images without amorphous blobs floating around in them.

Waterfall appreciation over, we investigated the railway bridge. Like the driveway gate, the railroad was overgrown with saplings and obviously hadn’t been used in years. Research I did while writing this post uncovered the facts that the railway was named the Cliffs Erie Railroad. The last train operated in 2001, but after that, cleanup trains, which collected leftover chips and pellets from the mines, operated until 2008.

A bustling little town was situated near the Two Island River, probably accessed through that overgrown driveway where we parked. Taconite Harbor, Minnesota, was a mining town built by the Erie Mining Company. In 1957, twenty-two prefabbed homes were trucked into a several block area near the lake. The little community even had a fire hall, community center, playground, and baseball/tennis courts.

It seemed like a 1950s ideal community. Seventy-five children grew up there and probably played along the river’s banks. In the 1970s, families were driven away by noise pollution and health concerns about the taconite dust that blew off the rail cars and from local stockpiles.

The steel industry lull added another blow in the 1980s and by 1988, the last resident had left the little Taconite Harbor town. In 1990, the remaining homes and buildings were packed up and transported away by trucks. Driving past the site, I recall seeing only empty asphalt streets, home foundations and streetlights. Nature has reclaimed much of the area, but town remnants remain. It’s truly a North Shore ghost town.

Russ and I didn’t have time to investigate the town site ourselves, but there are many good images of it on the internet. “Forgotten Minnesota” has some good ones.

The history of this area also includes an event that I narrowly escaped. It’s an involved tale so I’ll start from the beginning. In 1957 when the little town of Taconite Harbor was being formed, the mining company also began dumping ash from its nearby coal-fired power plant near the river and the town. I’m not sure it was illegal at the time, but it probably was as time went on. The dumping continued until 1982 and the pile covered 27 acres.

On the morning of July 28, 1993, I drove up the highway in a pale green government car through a heavy rain on my way up to Grand Marais for my job with the Forest Service. Later that day, thanks to the rain and the fact that the mining company had been dumping excess water from a coal stockpile onto the ash heap, the pile became saturated and it liquified in a rare phenomenon called “static liquefaction.”

The heap collapsed and flowed downhill, covering the highway and contaminating the river and Lake Superior. It knocked out an electric substation and buried someone in their car who was traveling on the highway. I can’t find any news reports about the incident now, but as I recall, the person was rescued. I believe another car was partially buried.

All I could think of at the time is that could have been me! Luckily, it wasn’t. And luckily, I already had been planning to stay overnight in Grand Marais because the highway was unpassable and closed until the ash was cleared later the next day when I traveled home.

Russ also recalls hearing about a truck that hit the top of one of the railroad bridges that span the highway at that site. As a result, the bridge spans that cross the highway have been removed, leaving just the tracks and growing saplings on either side.

In short, this is a picturesque area that has had a lot happen to it! Its history of abuse and neglect is probably why the site is not sought-after by more photographers or tourists. That’s too bad. I suppose the mining company still owns the area and they obviously just want to forget about it. The river and the old town site could use some love. The nearby harbor has had some public funds put into it. It’d be nice to see the same for the Two Island River.