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Manganese, Minnesota

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Manganese ruins and crumbling concrete foundation

Manganese is a ghost town in the U.S. state of Minnesota that was inhabited between 1912 and 1960. It was built on the Cuyuna Iron Range near the city of Trommald in Crow Wing County. At its peak around 1919, Manganese had two hotels, a bank, two grocery stores, a barbershop, a show hall, and a two-room school, and housed a population of nearly 600. Manganese was an incorporated community, laid out with three north–south and five east–west streets, and was named after the mineral located in abundance near the town. Concrete sidewalks and curbing lined the clay streets, which were never paved. The townspeople were largely immigrants, including Finns, Croatians, Austrians, Swedes, Irish, Australians, English people, Norwegians], Slovenians, and Serbs. During late World War I, all of the mines surrounding the community were running at full capacity, furnishing about 90% of the manganese used during the war. After the World War I armistice was signed, demand for manganiferous ore decreased, and Manganese experienced a sharp drop in population from its peak of nearly 600 in 1919 to 183 in 1920. As mining operations began to shut down, little employment was left in the community, and residents gradually started moving their homes out of town, relocating to other communities in the region to find new jobs. By 1960, the village was completely abandoned. (Full article...)