Listen and subscribe to our podcasts: Via Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
The iron ore buried beneath northern Minnesota fueled the nation's steel production and changed the course of American history, but raw materials were not the only thing the Iron Range exported.
A mid-sized city on the Mesabi Range, Hibbing has many natives who have made significant contributions to American culture: the city's list of famous former residents is unusually long, including musician Bob Dylan, former governor Rudy Perpich, basketball star Kevin McHale, baseball great Roger Maris, wine magnate Robert Mondavi, and food pioneer Geno Paulucci.
“Maybe it's underwater,” joked reader Frank Allen, who lives near Grand Rapids. He wanted to know why Hibbing has produced so many famous people. He turned to Curious Minnesota, the Star Tribune's reader-driven local reporting project, for answers.
The answer lies in part in Hibbing's history as a mining boom town that attracted a diverse group of hard-working immigrants to this remote area in the early 20th century. Taxes paid by lucrative mining operations helped develop a world-class education system in Hibbing, producing many notable graduates.
“I have iron beneath me.”
In the early 1890s, a prospector emerging from a campsite in northeastern Minnesota told a group of a dozen fellow travelers, “I feel like I have iron beneath my feet. My bones feel rusty and cold.”
Frank Hibbing's bone structure was correct.
Without having to dig deep into the frozen ground, workers found a reddish-orange soil with the consistency of flour for baking bread. The iron ore helped develop a bustling town that was home to more than 43 different ethnic groups, and the money from the mining brought about innovations like indoor plumbing, electrically lit streets, and the Carnegie Library.
The growing town's money tree was a huge mine now known as the Hull Rust Mahoning Mine. The expanding mine was so important that beginning in 1919, the entire village of Hibbing was moved two miles south on logs and steel wheels to allow miners access to more of the iron deposits.
“Mining and logging jobs were plentiful,” Hibbing Mayor Pete Heiduke said, “but they wanted to give their children more and better opportunities, so they placed a premium on educational opportunity by creating a great school system.”
Many of these new Americans were determined to build a better life for the next generation, said Craig Hattam, a retired Hibbing High School history teacher.
“That's the strength of immigration,” he said. “Your parents won't let you fail.”
Educational Monument
Residents took great care in designing a unique high school that remains a local landmark to this day. Built in 1920 at a cost of $4 million, Hibbing High School was a major undertaking made possible by taxes paid by the Oliver Mining Company.
Situated on 10 acres in the heart of Hibbing, this four-story Jacobean-style building of red brick and gray stone features ornate moulded ceilings, decorative tile floors and intricate murals. It is believed to be the first school in the nation with an indoor swimming pool.
It's full of luxurious details, from Belgian glass chandeliers to Tiffany glass-encased fire extinguishers.
“These people were exposed to great literature, great art, technology in the classroom and in the lab — that kind of stuff,” said Aaron Brown, who teaches at Minnesota North College's Hibbing campus and is writing a book about former Hibbing mayor Victor Power.
In 1925, a New York Times reporter called Hibbing High School “as grand as a cathedral” and “a dead end in Buffalo country.” The school included spaces for physics, drawing, art, sewing, cooking, music, automobile engineering, printing, typewriting, metalworking and botany.
Khattam said the school catered for students from kindergarten through two-year junior college at a time when many children in the country only made it through the eighth grade.
For decades, Hibbing has recruited top teachers from Duluth State Teachers College, and old yearbooks feature teachers from prestigious schools such as Stanford, Notre Dame, and MIT.
“Hibbing was able to attract them because it had the highest salaries and the best benefits in the five states for most of the 20th century,” said Mary Palsich Keyes, a Hibbing native who gives dozens of tours a year to Bob Dylan sites and Hibbing High School.
Hibbing's famous alumni
Nobel Prize Winning Musicians Bob DylanBorn in Duluth and raised in Hibbing, is the city's most famous former resident. A 1959 graduate of Hibbing High School, his success has earned him a trophy case display on the school's main floor, featuring his records, photos, yearbook and a proclamation for Bob Dylan Day in Minnesota.
Dylan, then known as Robert Zimmerman, was a bit of an oddball at school — his band would stomp the auditorium so much that the principal would shut out the noise, according to Toby Thompson's book “Positively Main Street” — he preferred to sit in the front row in English class, and, in a 1969 Village Voice profile, he credited teacher B.J. Rolfsen with teaching him “everything I know.”
Kevin McHale He's probably number two on the list of famous Hibbing High School alumni.
McHale was named Minnesota Mr. Basketball in 1976 while playing for the Hibbing High School Blue Jackets. He played basketball at the University of Minnesota and then had a decorated career with the Boston Celtics before returning to his home state to coach the Timberwolves.
He still makes appearances around his hometown, on the golf course and at Sammy's Pizza.
Geno Paulucci He was one of the first graduates to achieve fame.
Mr. Polucci, who graduated from college in 1935, developed a brand of canned Chinese food called Cheung King while running a grocery store in Hibbing, and later expanded into pasta and Mexican food through Michelina, a business he continued to run until his death in Duluth in 2011. Mr. Polucci chronicled the harsh conditions of his childhood in his book, “Geno: The Power of a Peddler.”
“This incident lit a flame deep within me that would never be extinguished if I had been born into a wealthy middle-class family,” he wrote.
The school's traditions continue among recent graduates.
Mary Myung-ok LeeA college graduate in the early 1980s, she is the author of the critically acclaimed The Evening Hero, the young adult novel Necessary Roughness, and Finding My Voice, a coming-of-age story about a Korean teenager living in a Minnesota town. She teaches at Columbia University.
journalist Bethany McLeanAfter graduating in 1988, she contributed an article to Fortune magazine called “Is Enron Overpriced?” She is credited with being the first journalist to question Enron's stock price before the energy company's financial scandals. She has published several books.
Those who left
Many of Hibbing's famous residents didn't stay in town very long.
Roger MarisAccording to the book “Still a Legend: The Roger Maris Story,” Roger Maris' ancestors immigrated to the city from Croatia in the early 1900s. Maris was born in Hibbing in 1934, but his family moved to Fargo when he was a child.
Maris is famous for hitting 61 home runs in 1961, which was then a major league season record.
According to the book, the slugger once said, “What do I know about Hibbing? I didn't live there long.”
Vincent BugliosiBorn in Hibbing in 1934, A graduate of Hollywood High School in California, Bugliosi prosecuted Charles Manson and several of his followers in the early 1970s and co-authored the best-selling 1974 book “Helter Skelter,” which chronicled Manson's crimes.
Wine King Robert MondaviRobert's family spent time in both Hibbing and Virginia, but that relationship ended when local Italians sent Robert's father, Cesare Mondavi, to California to buy wine grapes in 1921. According to Robert's memoir, “Harvests of Joy,” he fell in love with the frontier state and moved his family when Robert was a young boy.
Gary Puckett Born in Hibbing in 1942, he moved to Washington as a child and later became the frontman for the band Union Gap.
Former Governor Rudy Perpich Keyes said this perfectly illustrates Hibbing's story.
He was born poor and spoke only Croatian until he went to school. He graduated from Hibbing High School in 1946, served in the U.S. Army, and then attended Hibbing Junior College and the University of Minnesota. He returned to Hibbing to become a dentist and rose through the ranks in local and state politics, eventually serving as Governor of Minnesota for ten years.
“That's what public education can and should do,” Keyes said.
To submit a question about Minnesota, please fill out the form below.
Read more interesting Minnesota stories:
What did the Iron Range landscape look like before it was mined?
How important was the Iron Range to winning World War II?
Inside the Iron Range mines and giant machines
If Duluth is such a great outdoorsy city, where are the bike lanes?
Can Minnesota or any other state claim Paul Bunyan’s place?
Where does “uff da” come from, and why do Minnesotans say it?
