In Minnesota, tapped-out mines transformed into mountain biking destination
In Minnesota, tapped-out mines transformed into mountain biking destination
Seventy-year old John Schaubach steadily ground the gears of his mountain bike up a winding trail to the summit of Miner’s Mountain in northern Minnesota’s Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area — then let out a whoop as he surveyed the commanding view of aqua blue lakes surrounded by steep red hills, studded with lush green trees.
“The miracle of the power of nature to regenerate is probably what people should come out here to see,” he said as he caught his breath.
Decades ago this was a central part of Minnesota’s iron ore country. Deep mines in the region’s rich red earth yielded the iron ore that fed the nation’s steel mills that fueled the country’s 20th-century industrial growth.
But one by one in the 1960s and 1970s, the mines in this region closed. Workers and their families left the tiny towns of Crosby, Ironton and Cuyuna as the ore was depleted and the state’s iron ore mining industry shifted north to the Mesabi Range.
“The community almost imploded,” said Schaubach, a retired hospital administrator who’s now active with the Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Crew.
“A lot of people moved away for the jobs that weren’t here, and then this land just lay abandoned. The mining companies just walked away. There was just bare dirt, and discarded equipment and empty holes,” he said.
The barren landscape and deep mine pits became a place to illegally dump trash, an out-of-the way place for teenagers to party and a playground for ATV and motorbike riders.
But over the course of 30 years, the scarred landscape slowly healed, the pits filled with clear water and a group of far-sighted leaders managed to protect the land and set the stage for what would become a new outdoor recreation-based economy, built directly on the abandoned pits and waste piles of the old mining-based economy.
“This land is too important to be disrespected,” Schaubach said. “This represents the work of generations of people.”
And those mineworkers, without even knowing it, Schaubach said with a grin, left behind terrain perfect for mountain biking.
But first, the land needed to be protected.
“Our thing was, save it, this is special,” recalled Barb Grove, who was hired to head up Cuyuna Range Economic Development Inc. in 1983, at a time when the region was desperate for new jobs.
She said the community needed to be convinced the unique landscape was worth preserving.
“Because many of them were waiting for the mining to come back. And it wasn’t going to come back,” she said. “But it’s hard to look out into the future, past what you’ve already been experiencing.”
The Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board assembled a committee to decide what to do with the land. Grove was the only woman on it.
“And I was a newbie, so it was kind of interfering with the Old Boys Club,” she recalled.
But that didn’t stop her from pitching a bold idea. Let’s create a park, she said. A big one.
“And I can still see them, every one of them, leaning back in their chairs, folding their arms, and saying, ‘No. Won’t happen. Can’t happen.'”
But slowly Grove and other advocates got local leaders on board. In 1993, 10 years after the idea was first hatched, the state created the Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area.
The park remained largely undeveloped for years, until the Minnesota Off-Road Cyclists, a Twin Cities group, pitched a plan to create the first destination trail center built specifically for mountain bikers.
“And then they started talking about mountain bikes,” recalled Johnna Johnson, former director of the Cuyuna Lakes Chamber of Commerce. “And we’re like, we’re not mountains! This isn’t a mountainous area. It didn’t even make sense. There was such resistance at the beginning.”
But mountain bike advocates saw the Cuyuna area as an ideal canvas on which to build a new kind of trail system, a destination built purposely for mountain biking that featured “progressive” trails suitable for beginner to expert riders.
The vision was to showcase a new “evolution” of mountain biking, said Aaron Hautula, president of the Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Crew, “trails purposely crafted into the contour of every hill — momentum-based cycling — that the International Mountain Bike Association believed was the future of mountain biking.”
There was also resistance from those who had adopted the park as an unofficial playground for ATVs and dirt bikes.
“There were certainly times where the car was pulled up in some remote location in the rec area, and someone came and put a huge scratch the length of the car,” said Hansi Johnson, who worked to develop the area with the International Mountain Biking Association. “They obviously were not happy with what was going on.”
But Johnson said the biggest challenge was simply to educate local residents about mountain biking, to convince them that “adventure sports” could thrive in the Midwest and provide a vital boost to the local economy.
A mural in downtown Crosby, Minn. depicts the regions transition from an economy based on mining to outdoor recreation.
Yet, people remained skeptical that the $700,000 price tag to build the trails would have much of an economic impact.
“There was a lot of coffee talk about all those bikers,” said local real estate agent Joel Hartman. “You know, they don’t have pockets in their pants, how can they bring money into the town.”
Chris Albrecht was one of those skeptics. He owns a bar and Dairy Queen in the area with his wife.
“I was like, wow, I could ride dirt bikes or four wheelers or whatever out there, because I’m a big dirt bike guy,” he said. “So I was like, I’m not doing this, I’m mad.”
But in 2011, after federal funding was secured by Jim Oberstar, the late northeast Minnesota congressman and avid cyclist, the trails opened.
And soon after, Albrecht said, his wife and a friend convinced him to give them a try.
“We broke out the 1985 mountain bike, and I went and rode it one time, and I’m like, you know what, it’s almost like riding my dirt bike,” he said. “The only difference was, instead of giving it the gas, I’ve got to give it the gas by pedaling faster.”
And just like that, he was a convert. The next week he bought a $3,200 bike. He’s been riding the trails ever since.
Most other skeptics have also come around, said Johnson, who bought a coffee shop two years ago. “They’re seeing the growth, and now you can’t deny it. You just can’t. I had 40 bikers in here twice this summer all getting ice cream cones, and their bikes were stretched half a block.”
Visitation to the park has jumped 60 percent since the trails opened to 190,000 people a year.
Even the most ardent of cycling advocates are quick to point out that mountain biking can’t solve all a region’s economic ills. The median household income in the area, for example, is only about $30,000 a year — that’s half the statewide average.
Still, locals talk of an energy and excitement in the Cuyuna area that hasn’t existed in decades.
“There’s a hopefulness here now that there never was before,” said bike shop owner Jenny Smith.
Smith has a map on the wall of her store with pushpins showing the faraway places her customers have come from — Canada, Australia, Europe and all over the U.S.
“I think once people saw the vision,” she said, “and started seeing the cars coming in with the bikes on the racks and on top, people in the stores and in the restaurants spending money in town, people have really opened up their arms.”
The mountain bike trails have sparked a flurry of new development in downtown Crosby, including several new businesses that look straight out of uptown Minneapolis — a yoga studio, a farm to table restaurant and a cafe/art gallery/bike shop opening this fall.
“It’s unbelievable, 18 months ago, probably 50 percent of the buildings in town were vacant,” said realtor Joel Hartman. “But now, today, there are very few opportunities for investors to buy buildings because they have been purchased.”
One of those buildings will soon house the Cuyuna Brewing Company.
Nick Huisinga, who makes vaccines for the Willmar Turkey Company, cashed out his retirement and bought the building last year. He’s wanted to open a brewery for years, and after riding the Cuyuna mountain bike trails last year, he decided downtown Crosby was the right place to do it.
“The problem right now is the trails are young,” he said. “But there’s the vision to expand,” and “if they hit the master plan of 75 miles, a brewery will be a no-brainer.”
The Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Crew has raised about $600,000 from events, donations and a matching grant from a local foundation, the Hallett Charitable Trusts, to expand the trail system to 75 miles.
They’re hopeful for another $3.6 million in state funding to complete the build-out. That money was included in the state bonding bill in the last legislative session that ultimately failed to pass.
The existing trails have already improved the area’s quality of life, said Aaron Hautula, the club’s volunteer president, and have helped draw doctors, teachers and young entrepreneurs to the area.
“And we’re not done yet,” he said. “The big ah-ha will be when we recruit the next big business here, because why will they come? Because you have a world-class trail system, and you have unbelievable clean water and you just have an amazing experience.”
Back when iron mining was still the lifeblood of the region’s economy, mine workers would get their paychecks, go to the bank and then go to the bar, said Johnna Johnson, the former director of the Cuyuna Lakes Chamber of Commerce.
“You could tell it was a Friday in this town because the streets had red streaks on them from the bank to the bar.”
Now, 40 years later, she’s seeing a different kind of red tire tracks outside her coffee shop window — tracks left by mountain bike tires.
Once again, she said, “our future is paved with red.”
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