Hull-Rust-Mahoning and the Mesabi

Three miles long, two miles wide and 535 feet deep, and there is a public balcony on the rim.

The Hull-Rust-Mahoning pit at Hibbing is the largest operating open-pit iron mine in Minnesota and was one of the world's first mechanised open-pit mines. It was established in 1895 and named a National Historic Landmark in 1966. At its peak, from the First World War through the Second, it supplied as much as a quarter of all the iron ore mined in the United States, which is much of why Minnesota became the nation's largest iron ore producer and the country became the world's largest steel manufacturer.

It began as separate holes in the ground. The first mine on the Mesabi Range was the Mountain Iron Mine in 1890, and ore was found near what is now Hibbing in early 1892. The underground Burt and Sellers mines and the open-pit Mahoning all started shipping in 1895, and together with the Hull and Rust mines they soon merged into one enormous working, a consolidation driven by the formation of U.S. Steel in 1901, then the largest corporation in the world. The sheer size forced invention: the open-pit method had been pioneered at nearby Biwabik, and here it grew into steam shovels and mechanisation.

The town and the pit have always been in each other's way. Hibbing was founded in 1893 on word of the ore, and by 1910 the mine surrounded the north end of the community on three sides, with everyone well aware that the ore continued underneath the town itself.

That tension has not stopped. The City of Hibbing has run a visitor centre on the edge of the mine for more than 40 years, and in 2019 the Mine View moved about half a mile west to 611 McKinley Street to make way for mining activity. Two permanent buildings replaced the temporary structure in 2025, and that first season drew an estimated 30,000 visitors. In June 2026 the Mesabi Tribune reported new exhibits built with the Science Museum of Minnesota covering the 130-year legacy of mining on the Iron Range. Volunteers from the Hibbing Tourist and Senior Center guide it and run it. Mine trucks and mining equipment sit outside.