Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the Community.

Member FDIC.

Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm producer-director Scott Knutson.

In this episode we visit Crosby's Croft Mine Museum and talk with the committee that hopes to restore it.

I'm Barb Grove and I'm introducing you to the Croft Mine Historical Park that I have been trying to restore for a long, long time.

This is an abandoned mine, an underground mine which then went to open pit mining and it was a museum and now we're trying to restore that so that we have a history of that era of time.

When it was open, it was people in the museum and gift stores and going through, looking at information about mining, understanding the history of the mining and then it was a park.

It was a place where people came and got together and had reunions and it was just fabulous.

Greg Mitchell is on our Croft Community Committee CCC and his purpose and my purpose and the committee member's purpose is to restore the Croft Mine Historical Park.

I'm Greg Mitchell.

I'm a guy who was born in Montana.

I've lived on the East coast.

I've lived on the West coast and I ended up in St. Paul where I met my wife and we started touring around and at first we had a sailboat then we moved up to a pop-up camper and we toured the entire state.

We drove around Lake Superior, then we discovered Crosby.

We went mountain biking.

We enjoyed the dining that's going on here and the next thing you know we bought a house here and we're trying to figure out how to move to the town of Crosby.

So, about a year ago I was walking through Crosby and I stopped at the farmers market.

There was a lady there, Barb Grove that introduced me to the history and she would teach people about the history of Crosby and what was going on and so she knew I was interested in it so she invited me to a meeting on the historical Croft Mine that we're standing at now.

Once I was able to walk through it with her and I met some of the mining families that had actually lost families in it, I was just hooked and I was addicted and I said what can I do to help and so we went, she went and said hey let's form a committee and I'm like I'm on it.

I'm all in.

So, we've been meeting and trying to figure out what we can do as a committee to bring this site, this exhibit back to the public eyes to teach people about Crosby and what the history of the city is and be exciting for people to come and tour this site.

We want to upgrade it for several reasons.

It's right on the trail, the mountain bike trail and so we want to invite everyone to come in because they've been asking to come in and we want to make that possible.

So, our committee was formed and we said hey, how do we do this?

How do we get this place restored and before we wanted to restore it, we wanted to talk to the community and say hey is this something the community wants?

Is this needed or is this just a bunch of us having an idea?

So, we created a brochure that talked about what we think our plan would be for this.

We put it around at local businesses and we handed it out.

We created a Facebook page and instantly we had people coming out of the woodwork.

They said how can we help?

Can we join your committee?

We heard stories about people who used to work at this exhibit selling tickets in high school.

In the 1990's it was the center of community activities and there were reunions and celebrations.

And we have to plan so it's a fun city again.

It isn't just mountain biking.

We wanted to be a fishing destination.

We want swimming.

We just want outdoor activities that are fun for everyone to do to come to Crosby and this site here can be a destination where people sit on picnic tables and chat.

There's no reason a mountain biker doesn't talk to a fisherman and this is one of those common ground places that's just a free zone of just fun.

We've kept it so small for so long the committee and the work that we're doing because we had to find out how the community felt about it and now we know that we have 100% support.

We just have to make sure that we make it work.

Paul Kirkman is a local small business person who has come into this community because he knows how to run a business.

Paul Kirkman had never even heard about the Croft and so we took him on a tour and he came out so impassioned about the need to restore the Croft Mine Historical Park.

My name is Paul Kirkman, my spouse Paul Vanderwal and I own Victual located in downtown Crosby on Main Street.

We are a specialty store that sells our own house made ice cream that is full dairy and lactose free.

We have Artisan cheeses, charcuterie package gourmet, specialty wine, spirits and liqueurs, all kinds of good things.

Things that you normally wouldn't find in this part of the state and we are really excited to be a part of Crosby's Renaissance and we are keeping our fingers crossed for the Croft Mine and hoping that we're able to reopen some kind of functional exhibit that tourists to the area can explore and learn a little bit about Crosby's first life.

Crosby's a remarkable town.

It's kind of going through a Renaissance and that's what made us interested in locating Victual in Crosby.

The town's origin back in the day was a mining community with all kinds of iron ore mines in the area and over the decades those tailings have been reclaimed by nature and are now host to the mountain bike trail system and the Silent Sports of the Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area.

So, my hope for Crosby in the future is that it's a fun destination for people to go see and by fun, I don't mean just mountain biking or fine dining.

I want them to come and explore and learn about the mines.

People see all these lakes.

Well it looks like any other lake until you realize it's 300 feet deep.

So, I hope Crosby can kind of bridge that gap between tourism and education so people understand what actually went on here and how this whole community has been restored because when mining left, the town lost a ton of employment.

It slowly went downhill and now we're rebuilding that up.

After the mines closed and we're talking about the late 1970's and early 1980's the town of Crosby kind of died a slow death and businesses retrenched and for many decades the main focus in a retail basis was the antique stores in the area and God bless those antique stores because they kept the town alive and what's really exciting now is that the next generation of retail is coming to Crosby.

We really thought that some of the things that my spouse and I missed from when we lived in the Twin Cities we could kind of support that business locally and bring some of the things that we enjoyed to the area.

Every time that my spouse and I would travel to the Cities, we would put a cooler in the back of the car and we would make a list of six, seven, eight different stops that we would hit on the way back and it was bringing back all of the things that we used to buy without even thinking about it in the Twin Cities and as we talked to friends, we noted that they all kind of did the exact same thing and so we thought if we had need for better cheeses, Artisan cheeses, Artisan chocolate and fancy cocktail ingredients and specialty wines and spirits then we weren't the only ones that would be looking for those kinds of products and that's how we filled up our store and that's why we chose Crosby.

And four there you are and thank you much, napkins here if you need them, The Cuyuna Country State Recreation trails are really magical.

What sets them apart is they're a destination for Silent Sport lovers.

So, in the summertime you have mountain biking.

You have hiking.

You have paddle sports like stand-up paddle boarding in the old mine pits and there's such just this gentleness to the area that really draws all of those lovers of Silent Sports and that really appealed to us as business owners.

We go around, we play in the outdoor activities but there's also rainy days and things like the Croft Mine exhibit where you can go and explore and see the exhibit and go into the dry house on those rainy days but it's also a gathering space where you can have the town meet and talk about things.

You can meet complete random strangers during the day and just have a good time.

It's an open space that is only going to add value.

I'd like to introduce Joan Stefani and her father actually worked at this mine and so she has a great reverence for this particular mine but for mining in general.

Well, you know all the miners not just those that are living but those, there are many that lost their lives underground and like as my father was cut for four different times in the different mines.

One of them was the Croft but I wish I knew the whole history.

You know, when you're a kid you don't ask all these questions and well we didn't find out about them when we were young because I think it would have frightened us.

Well, I wasn't born at the time.

My father was, he came in very young.

He started working in the mines when he was 14 years old and I'm not sure how old he was here but he was probably in his early 20's.

So, I didn't come along until later.

So, he was single.

So, I was born here in 1935.

I went to school, Kindergarten through grade 12 and I always tell people I take no backseat for my education.

I had an excellent education here.

So, when I went to college up at St. Scholastica, it was easy for me because I had been so well prepared in the Kindergarten through 12 years.

I give that all that honor to my teachers here in Crosby.

My father was an iron ore miner for 53 years.

37 of them were underground and about 8 of them were here in this area.

The Croft was one of them.

My father never talked about his experiences.

As a kid growing up, I never learned anything.

It was only in his later age and when I was older that he shared with me some of the different things that happened.

When he was cut underground four different times in different mines.

One was the Croft and I'm not sure what the story was about that but he each time his life was saved.

No my dad's footprints are in here.

It's a very, it's so sturdily built and it's not damp or no moldy or anything no.

Barb Grove is who we call Mother Cuyuna.

She has been in this community for a long time but she's the vision behind what Crosby is slowly becoming.

It's a Silent Sports mecca.

It's a place that tourism is going to happen in.

People come here because Barb had this idea years ago and she wouldn't take no for an answer but just because we got the mountain bike park going doesn't mean that she's done with her vision yet.

This Croft Mine is another piece of her vision that is going to add to this community and she's working night and day trying to figure out how to get this to happen right now.

So, I'd love to have you come along with me and we'll take a tour of the old Croft Mine Historical Park and look at the old museum before we restore it in our future so it becomes a viable exciting place for everyone.

This is built, I'll tell you who supervised this and that was a Munchie Perpich who was a miner and a friend of mine.

His wife Gloria said that when when Munchie was working with the contractors here they wanted to use different logs, they wanted to do things different, he said no way you're going to do it like they did it and look it's held up in all these years, you know, 20 some years with nobody paying any attention and even the elevator works.

The elevator guys came and took the elevator down.

Now I'm going to take you into what's called a Dog Hole and a Dog Hole is where the men, the miners would actually begin to find new veins of ore and so they would come off of the regular vein and they would bring and they'd drill in just around, usually the dog hole be about as big as the miner himself and then they get a sample and send it to be tested to see whether this was good ore and they should go further.

So, it was the beginning and if there was waste on it, later on they would take it up to the sintering plant and they'd burn off the part that was not useful because they didn't want to be shipping just waste and sometimes they'd have to blast through.

So, the blaster was a very important person and I had a neighbor that was a blaster and he made a fireplace with some of the rock that he did and he had a magnificent fireplace.

He had lots of binghamite which is a metal that is only found on the Cuyuna Range, bright red.

It's bright red.

My father worked, well was underground.

They always had partners.

They worked with partners and I'm sorry that we couldn't get another.

Jim Roca was his partner.

I believe what they did was they're probably tremors and you know what tremors are?

Okay, they load up the carts, when the ore comes on, so it takes it to the lift to bring it up and they shoveled many times,12 hours a day.

When my father first started working in the mines, he worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week for $2.25 cents a day but it was money for them because he had come over from Italy with his father and it was money that they didn't have and they were always grateful for the job.

They never lacked for looking for work never.

Got another one of our miners coming down the ladder and the ore would come down into the ore car.

Is so solid.

And this is their tally.

Is there a mark for 16 tons and what do you get?

Well, personally for me it's in honor of the men who worked in those Mines gave their all and I can never remember my father ever complaining that he had to go to work but I'm sure there was there were very hard hard things that they had to face and so I think it's in dedication to all those miners and what they gave.

That's first and foremost and then I think for ongoing history it should be made known what the the value of the, not only of the ore, but of the miners lives.

It was hard working.

It was so hard working being a miner.

You'd work 12 hours a day sometimes during the day, sometimes during the night and oftentimes they stayed at boarding houses and they had what are called hotbeds.

So, there'd be two guys using the bed, one in the morning and one at night, another one at night.

It was a hard life.

It was a dangerous life and a lot of them, after the mines closed they didn't want to talk about it but now they realize how important they were to the development of the whole community.

So, it stays like 50 degrees down here year round?

Yes, when you're down here you don't know it's summer.

You don't know it's winter and I think it's more like maybe 56 degrees something like that and it's very nice for the summertime and I think it would be great for a Halloween party because you could come in your costume and just enjoy yourself and be scared out of your wits.

I can remember even as a young person and you go to The City Laundromat and they'd have two different rooms even.

One for the miners and one for the regulars because this soil is red dirt is so hard to get off anything.

How has it changed since the last time you were in here?

I'm just noticing something that is has been added to it but otherwise not at all and the ore car looks very original.

Here's a dynamite plunger.

And then you're going to pass those original pictures and you'll see the Croft Mine, how it was originally designed and preserved.

And that will take you to the engineer's office.

Well, right now you're coming into the engineer's office and he's got two big jobs.

One of them is to get the miners to give them the best ore possible.

That is his first goal, get the good ore.

The second one is do it safely.

This is what what they say and it doesn't always work that way because sometimes they go a little further than they're supposed to go underground.

He also determines how many loads have gone out.

He tallies the loads and so he must be involved in determining the pay that the miners get when they go through.

So, he's a pretty busy guy and this is all original stuff from the engineer's office.

And now we're coming into the dry house and as the name says it's where the miners came in to clean off, to dry off to go home because actually if their wives had to go to a laundromat they'd have to have two laundries.

One for the red dust and one for normal.

So, they tried to cut that down right here so they could go home and have a nice meal or have a nice night.

And now I'm going to show you something that nobody would take because it's so heavy and this is native nugget.

It's a copper nugget and it was found in the glacial drift during mining operations near Riverton, Minnesota which is part of the Cuyuna Mountain Bike Trail and it was carried by the glaciers from northern Michigan thousands of years ago.

So, this came from the Sagamore Mine and so we have this very,very heavy copper.

So, we have things that go back thousands and thousands of years and we want to bring this place right back up to this century too and include it all because we owe so much to our mining history.

I would like to see it be restored and there there are still buildings here and it it shows you the hardship that the men had to go through just to for this right here for it and I just think it's an honor to those men first and foremost and then to preserve the history of the mining.

It's not only this mine but it's all the mines that meet up and they were crucial especially during the first and second world wars.

I want them to think of all all what the miners went through so that this area could go on as a beautiful recreation area here now.

The very first new businesses that responded to the influx of tourists from the bike trails, I think we're real risk takers and real visionaries for what this area could become and I give so much credit to those that took significant risks.

I was in about year three of Crosby's Renaissance when we opened Victual and everyone talks about how much of a risk Paul and I took as we opened the store and neither of us viewed it as a risk because we viewed the other businesses as being the risk takers and we were kind of beneficiaries of their trailblazing but what's interesting as each new business comes to the area, it begets something else.

There's another business that wants to open.

This year we just had Cuyuna Outfitters as a new business and Ironton just opened the Hudson 218 as a local bike shop, eatery, coffee shop with a ride in front door.

Who would have thought of that?

That's amazing.

But it's the enthusiasm of each new business that tends to build on the last and it's infectious.

Everyone wants to come to Crosby.

Our design would be a gift shop, a little bit of an office, some place for people to relax and if you notice that overhead that you can see lots of wonderful places that people can design and they can put flags up and banners up and you know all kinds of things that would be exciting to have if you're having a wedding or a celebration or a reunion.

That'll be a storage area because we need to if we're going to have celebrations out in the main room.

We need tables and chairs and the kinds of things that you need.

So, that's what our plan is.

If you want to help check out our Facebook page.

Reach out to us.

Tell us your special skills and how you might be able to help us and we can see if we can work with you and fit you into our group.

One image I have for this, is that when people come to visit there's a selfie station.

I want people to post on Instagram, on Facebook.

I want them to take a snapshot and have Crosby in the background because it's a fun destination for people to want to come back when they come visit again.

There's no reason why Crosby and Ironton and Cuyuna and our surrounding communities aren't that destination where people are like hey we're two hours from the metro let's drive up and visit for the weekend and go shopping.

Let's go enjoy Crosby for what it is.

I'm honoring my father and the miners.

I continue to do that and I know he's happy, he's looking down and saying yeah go for it go just go yeah.

Thank you so much for watching.

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Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the Community.

Member FDIC.

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