For the first time in two years, visitors to a state park in northern Minnesota can once again travel nearly a half mile underground into the dark bowels of a historic iron ore mine.
Underground tours at the Lake Vermillion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park near Tower, resume May 23, two years after they were shut down in 2024 after severe flooding damaged the mine following a massive rainstorm.
Prior to the flooding, the tours were also closed for two years beginning in 2022 for a $9 million project to reconstruct the mine shaft.
The mine opened in 1882, supplying iron ore that was shipped to blast furnaces around the Great Lakes to forge the steel that was vital to the nation’s rapid industrial growth.
Tours were offered starting just three years after the mine closed in 1962. Every year, about 35,000 visitors from around the world travel 2,341 feet underground in the mine’s vintage equipment.
Park staff were ecstatic when tours resumed for a few weeks in 2024 after the long construction project, said Andrea Doerr, interpretive supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, which manages the park.
Then, in June, seven and a half inches of rain fell in less than 24 hours. At the same time, the mine was hit with a power outage.
“It was essentially the perfect storm,” said Doerr. Without the electric pumps used to keep the mine dry, rainwater and silt flooded into the mine. At Level 27, the deepest section of the mine where tourists ride an electric train into a giant cavern where the iron ore was dug out of the earth, tunnels were flooded with nine feet of water and dirty sludge.
"Everything that's electrical down there was essentially ruined, destroyed,” said Doerr. “Our locomotives, all of the lighting, all of that needed to get rebuilt and replaced.”
It was a big blow to staff who had worked so hard to reopen the mine following the shaft restoration project, Doerr said. They’ve worked every day since the flooding to get the mine ready to reopen.
“To be able to travel a half mile underground, experience brief total darkness, to imagine what it would have been like to work in an underground iron mine, it’s a really unique experience,” Doerr added.
If you go
Tours lasting 90 minutes are offered through the third week of October. The temperature in the mine is a constant 51 degrees year-round. Visitors are encouraged to wear a jacket and sturdy boots or shoes.
Tours cost $15 for adults, $10 for children 5-12, and are free for children under five. Reservations are recommended. Officials expect pent-up demand.
No purses, backpacks, or strollers are allowed underground. The three-minute cage ride down to the mine is in a dimly lit, closed, confined space.
