Taconite, MN

Taconite is an Itasca County city of 651 residents in the 2020 census, a Highway 169 community on Minnesota's Iron Range. The city was established in 1907 as one of the whistlestop places that appeared alongside the region's iron-mining operations. U.S. 169 remains the main route through town, linking Taconite with other Range communities and the broader Itasca County road network. The place name carries a geological sound, while local accounts connect it to the Taconic Mountains.

The Cannisteo mine pit sits beside town and keeps the mining landscape close. Taconite is one of the small Range Cities that grew near the iron operations farther northeast, and Highway 169 still follows the corridor that binds them. Forest, rock cuts, mine land, and lakes fill the spaces between town and neighboring communities. Taconite calls itself the Hub of the Nation, a fitting local line for a place at a road crossing in the northern Minnesota woods. It is a small city with an industrial name and a landscape built from timber, water, and iron.