Watch your compass needle for signs of deflection as you proceed to the small but tidy town of Crosby, the center of Minnesota’s “forgotten” iron range, the Cuyuna. The flood-prone mines have died out, but the surrounding landscape still bears evidence of mining’s heyday, with lakes and hills created by subsidence and strip mining, and also by contemporary gravel quarrying. Crosby itself has a nice park fronting onto Serpent Lake, complete with a brightly colored Chinese dragon, while Croft Mine Historical Park (daily in summer; tour $3.50; 218/546-5466), well-posted on the edge of Crosby, profiles the iron-mining industry and an era, covering immigration and labor issues as well as the actual mining process. Machinery, period buildings, a gift shop, and a simulated underground tour round out the site’s features.
South of Crosby, the GRR leaves the truck traffic and takes to the cornfields and sumac-laced forests again, passing as many barns as houses, the occasional lakeside hideaway, and some rural town halls; for a thumbnail overview of the area’s settlement history, keep an eye peeled for the historical markers along the way.
