Elcor, Minnesota
| Elcor, Minnesota | |
|---|---|
| Ghost town | |
 Elcor, Minnesota
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| Coordinates: 47°30′19″N 92°26′28″W / 47.50528°N 92.44111°WCoordinates: 47°30′19″N 92°26′28″W / 47.50528°N 92.44111°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Minnesota |
| County | Saint Louis |
| Time zone | Central (CST) (UTC-6) |
| • Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC-5) |
| Area code(s) | 218 |
| GNIS feature ID | 661197 |
Elcor is a ghost town, or more properly, an extinct town on the eastern end of the Mesabi Iron Range, near the city of Gilbert in Saint Louis County, Minnesota, United States. An unincorporated community before it was abandoned, Elcor was never a neighborhood proper of the city of Gilbert, but the area where Elcor was located was annexed by the city of Gilbert when the existing city boundaries were expanded after 1969. The people of Elcor were only generally considered to be citizens of Gilbert.
Elcor was located on a bed of taconite consisting of a uniform mixture of about 30% iron, interspersed with pockets of high grade ore, a part of the Biwabik iron formation, a great sheet of iron-bearing sediment deposited during the Precambrian era on the bottom of a large body of water called the Animikie Sea. This iron-bearing rock extends under Lake Superior from the Mesabi and Vermilion Iron Range on the north, south to the Gogebic Iron Range extending from northern Wisconsin into the Marquette Range of the upper peninsula of Michigan, and west to the manganese rich ore of the Cuyuna Iron Range. Michigan’s steel-blue high grade ores were quite different from those on the Mesabi, which was soft brown hematite. Iron is also located in other areas of Minnesota, but in quantities that are no longer practical to mine.
Geologists divide the iron-bearing rocks of the eastern Mesabi Iron Range into several layers: its four main divisions from the top down are named the Upper Slaty, Upper Cherty, Lower Slaty and Lower Cherty. Below these are quartzite and granite and the top is Virginia Slate and Duluth Gabbro. The Slate is from fifty to several hundred feet thick, and below this the four iron-bearing members are from four hundred to six hundred feet thick.
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