Great Northern Iron: James J. Hill's 109-Year Mining Trust

By James A. Stolpestad Great Northern Iron is a 302-page hard cover book that presents a comprehensive history of the Great Northern Iron Ore Properties, which owned 67,000 acres located in Minnesota's Mesabi Range. The Properties were spun off from the Great Northern Railway in 1906 by distributing Trust Certificates to Great Northern Railway stockholders on the basis of one trust certificate for each share of Great Northern stock. This volume includes original documents, photographs, maps and detailed tables. It features dramatic 36-inch fold out maps that show the entire Northern Minnesota mining region from both a bird's eye view and in cross section. The trust was established to comply with the Hepburn Act, which forbade the railroads from hauling commodities they produced. The book stresses the role of Louis Hill, trust president and chief executive officer from its founding until he retired in 1945. Over its lifetime, the trust distributed $561 million to its owners in current d