The newspaper headline jumped out at me, and the logo in the accompanying picture clinched it.  I had to go see the new visiting exhibit at The Depot about the Erie Mining Company, and my sister Susie had to accompany me.  No arguments there, we stood in front of the display the very next afternoon.

My dad, Dick Brewer, spent his whole career as a mining engineer at Pickands Mather.  Those were household words in our family, and they brought us from Michigan’s UP to Duluth when I was only two years old.  What I didn’t know was that Pickands Mather spawned Erie Mining to process taconite into pellets. That’s just one of the things I learned in the museum.

It took some searching to find the exhibit. No wonder, it merely consisted of a four-sided billboard, a railroad inspection car and a large logo.  Disappointing at first, once we took the time to read and absorb the material, it was actually quite informative.  Especially for two sisters who were only little girls during Dad’s tenure at P/M.

When we discovered that the Hoyt Lakes iron mine and processing plant along with the private railroad that connected it to Taconite Harbor were opened in 1957, a light bulb went on.  That’s the year Dad was transferred to Duluth, no doubt to support the new mine.  The fact that he spent two years working in Hoyt Lakes, commuting two hours from Duluth each way, suddenly fell into perspective.  Although the exhibit focused entirely on mine operations and the processing that turned the ore into taconite pellets, we finally had the bigger picture.  These were the benefactors of Dad’s mining engineering expertise.

I well remember ore boats bearing the P/M symbol passing under the Aerial Bridge.  I had a poster of ore boat smokestacks next to my childhood bed, and knew the one for Dad’s company.  The museum wasn’t focused on the shipping aspect of the business, so I turned to Wikipedia to help me out.  The Pickands Mather Company had the second largest shipping fleet on the Great Lakes around 1920, which was later spun off to become Interlake Steamship Company.  At that time, P/M was also the second largest iron mining company in the U.S.

I always had a sweet spot for Pickands Mather.  Not only did it support our family, but it paid my way through college by virtue of a generous scholarship program.  As a high school senior, I traveled to the corporate office in Cleveland and first learned the meaning of a “corner office” when I met the executives as a scholarship recipient.

Both of my grandfathers were superintendents of mines.  So it’s in the blood, although the legacy ended with my dad.  The afternoon was time well spent.  Thanks, Erie Mining, for the family history lesson.