For a short time just after the Civil war, it looked like gold would be the mineral to make Minnesota miners rich. The Vermilion Gold rush of 1865 started and stopped quickly, but it opened the door to the state’s main mineral export.
Transcript
Prospectors discovered flecks of gold in the rocks along the shore of Lake Vermilion in 1865. The discovery attracted hundreds of others from around the country hoping it might pay off big like the earlier California Gold Rush.
Rick Sandri is president of the gold exploration company Vermillion Gold that continues to search for the valuable metal in Minnesota. He says the Vermilion Lake gold proved too difficult for the technology available at the time to make mining feasible.
“In most cases the gold was what they called ‘hard-fought," Sandri said.
"The rock was extremely hard. It wasn’t soft material and you had to do a lot of work to get it out. The gold deposits were not that big either.”
The process of looking for gold, however, led to the realization that Minnesota’s northern hills were filled with iron ore, which would prove to be a viable industry for more than a century.