Photograph of Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park — Photograph by ShakataGaNai, CC BY 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Soudan Iron Mine

A National Historic Landmark. Built in 2010. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

From the record

“The Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park is a Minnesota state park at the site of the Soudan Underground Mine, on the south shore of Lake Vermilion, in the Vermilion Range (Minnesota). The mine is known as Minnesota's oldest, deepest, and richest iron mine.”
Wikipedia article Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 126 National Register listings published here for St. Louis County · listed in 1966 · category: Site · built in 2010 · a National Historic Landmark.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. Tower-Soudan State Park, Tower, 55782
When was it listed? November 1966
Category. site
Township. Breitung township
When was it built? 2010
National Register reference number. 66000905 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

75 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 75 fires within 5 miles of Soudan Iron Mine between 1992 and 2019, burning about 32 acres in total. 7 started naturally. 11 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	23
Recreation and ceremony	19
Arson/incendiarism	11
Natural	7
Equipment and vehicle use	6
Power generation/transmission/distribution	5
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3
Smoking	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
6 September 2006	Natural	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
6 September 1998	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
5 September 2007	Natural	under an acre	Superior National Forest	RICE BAY
19 September 2016	Power generation/transmission/distribution	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
15 September 2006	Arson/incendiarism	1.0 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
9 August 2007	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
31 August 2006	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
30 August 2003	Recreation and ceremony	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in St. Louis County

Mines and quarries near this property

3 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 3 workings within 5 miles of Soudan Iron Mine: 2 past producers, 1 unknown. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Iron, Gold. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
North American Mine	Gold	Unknown	Gold
Armstrong Bay Mine	Iron	Past Producer	1923
Soudan Iron Mine	Iron	Past Producer	Hematite, Magnetite

Every working recorded in St. Louis County

Storms near this property

7 since 1998

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Tower, the town this property stands in, in 7 storm reports between 1998 and 2019: 6 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	An 18 inch diameter tree was downed with the tops of a few 100-year-old pine trees broken off as well.
July 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	Twenty-inch diameter pine trees were blown down on Birch Point of Lake Vermilion.
July 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	Two large trees fell on a truck near Isle of Pines on Lake Vermilion, barely missing its occupants.
July 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	no account filed
April 2003	Hail	Tower	-	no account filed
July 1999	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	no account filed
August 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Tower	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in St. Louis County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

3 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Stuntz Bay Boathouse Historic District	0.3 miles	2007
Tower Fire Hall	2.2 miles	1980
Duluth and Iron Range Railroad Company Passenger Station	2.3 miles	2013

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 66000905 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
St. Louis County	All 126 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.