OPEN PIT MINE

Black River Falls, Jackson County. 1982. c. 3,500 ft. The entire open pit mine of the Inland Steel Corporation operation is in view. Precambrian magnetite, overlain by a thin Cambrian sandstone layer, was extracted here from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Although iron deposits still remain at this site, declining demand for ore resulted in the subsequent closing of the mine. In the early 1990s, about ten years after this photograph was made, the State of Wisconsin allowed ground water levels to rise in the former mine to create Lake Wazee, now the deepest inland body of water in the state with a depth of 350 feet.