April 4, 2022 by Philip Lewenstein

Marble Memories: Life in a Small Minnesota Mining Town

I grew up and have lived in mid-to-large cities—Duluth, Twin Cities—but I always have been fascinated in learning about life in small towns.

My interest in small towns stems from a few childhood memories of Marble, a small town of under 1,000 people on Minnesota’s Iron Range. My father, Irvin Lewenstein, grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in Marble with his two younger brothers, Morris and Harry, and my grandparents, Sam and Gertrude.

Marble, like many other small, once-flourishing mining towns, is a shadow of its past. But based on a few summer visits in the 1950s, I recall Marble as an idyllic, neighborly, clean, scenic village where everyone knew everyone. I remember a school across the street from my grandparents’ house, a library, a beautiful baseball field, a main street with a few stores, including my grandfather’s, bars, and nearby lakes.

Fortunately, Harry and, later, his son, Bruce, have compiled much family history. After visiting  in the early 1990s, Harry wrote a short memoir of life in Marble in the first half of the 20^th century. A participant in the early days of the electronics industry in northern California, Harry was intrigued with the rapid pace of technological change—a major focus of his memoir.

I recently reread Harry’s memoir, which focuses on changes in technology. I integrate his observations with a little history of Marble—how it started—and family history—how my grandparents came to Marble.

Mining Drove Origins of Marble

Marble, a city in Itasca County, is part of the chain of small mining towns known as the Iron Range. Highway 169 serves as the main route in the community. The population of Marble, incorporated as a village on April 20, 1909, has ranged from a low of 618 in 1990 to a high of 887 in 1910, according to the U.S. decennial census. The population was estimated at 671 in 2019.

In the early 1900s, the railroad and mining industry drove the growth of Marble and surrounding areas. John C. Greenway, the superintendent of the Canisteo District, opened the Canisteo, Walker, Holman, and Hill mines with rail shipments beginning in 1907( www.marblemn.com).

Under Greenway’s supervision, the village of Marble was surveyed into streets and lots with homes constructed around 1908. The city of Marble was named after R.N. Marble, a U.S. Steel official from Duluth.

The village was built to accommodate miners and their families, some of whom were still living in tents. Some families settled about a half mile north and slightly east of Marble in what was known as White City. Most of these people moved into Marble when home construction was completed. Some continued to live there until the opening of the Gross Marble Mine severed access to the road leading to White City.

When the three Lewenstein brothers were growing up, Marble had Lewenstein’s clothing and hardware store, Kocian’s grocery store, a pool hall/beer saloon, a village liquor store, Eddie Monicellis Beer Saloon, a gas station/garage, the American Legion Club, a barber shop, and a beauty shop, according to Harry.

From Lithuania to Marble in the Early 1900s

How did my family settle in Marble?

My grandfather, Samuel Lewenstein, came to Marble in 1916, according to Harry. He was born in 1888 in Kovarsk, Lithuania, a small town of about 1,000 people in a rural area (the town was destroyed by the Germans in World War II).

Sam came to the United States alone in 1907. He left Russia, made his way to Liverpool, England, and then came by ship to Portland, Maine. From there, he traveled to Superior, Wisconsin, where some of his acquaintances from Kovarsk had settled.

About a year later, Sam went to Bovey at the western edge of the Mesabi Iron Range; he worked as a blacksmith, helping to construct the Trout Lake Washing Plant.

A few years later, Sam went to work as a clerk in a men’s clothing store in Chisholm. After learning the business, he opened his own store in the town of Mesabi on the eastern end of the Iron Range. The town no longer exists.

About 1916, Sam closed the store in Mesabi and opened a clothing store in Marble, about 50 miles to the west, and only a few miles from Bovey, his first stop on the Range. After about a year, he was drafted into the army and served in World War I.

Sam returned to Marble after his army discharge and operated his clothing and hardware store until the end of 1956, when he sold it and moved to Duluth, 2411 London Road, in January 1957. I vaguely recall being in the store as a child, and I have a few old pictures of the store, overflowing with merchandise.

The Lewensteins were honored guests of a farewell party for friends and neighbors in the Marble village hall on Saturday evening, December 15, 1956, according to a front-page story in the December 21, 1956, Bovey Press. The event was sponsored by the Poppe-Smuk-Appleget Post and Auxiliary of the American Legion. A magician from Grand Rapids entertained with “his clever acts” after a pot-luck supper.

Sam and Gertrude were active in the village and community affairs, the article notes. Sam served as treasurer of the post for several years. Gertrude was a charter member of the Auxiliary and served as president and treasurer for several years.

In 1919, Sam married Gertrude Flint. She was born in 1896 in Volkimir, a small city near Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. Her family came to the United States in 1902; the journey took them by ship to Montreal, and then by train to Duluth, where her father operated a grocery store.

Gertrude graduated from Duluth Central High School about 1914 and worked as a bookkeeper at a jewelry store until she married Sam in 1919. She died in 1960, Sam in 1963.

Most of the people in Marble of my grandparents’ generation were born in the “old country”—Scandinavian countries, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Serbia, Croatia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and possibly a few more nations, according to Harry. Sam and Gertrude were born in Czarist Russia.

My father was born in Duluth in 1920. He grew up in Marble, worked in the mines while in school, and attended Greenway High School in Coleraine. He attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for a year or two and met my mother, Beatrice Moskol. After serving in World War II, he married my mother in 1946 and, after my birth in 1948 in Minneapolis, they moved to Duluth, her home.

Morris was born in 1924. After attending junior college on the Range, he finished his undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago and his PhD at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. After teaching high school in Illinois, Morris moved to northern California in 1953 to become a professor at San Francisco State College, now University.

Harry was born in Grand Rapids in 1927, studied engineering at the University of Minnesota, and served in the navy. He began working in northern California in the early 1950s.

Dramatic Changes Occurred in First Half of 20^th Century

In his short memoir, “Life on the Mesabi Iron Range in the First Half of the 20^th Century,” Harry contrasts the period in which his father grew up and the years in which he grew up in Marble.

In the 1890s, there were no airplanes, no automobiles, no radios or television, probably no electricity or telephones, no antibiotics. Yet before he died, Sam flew from the United States to Israel on a jet airplane.

During Harry’s lifetime, the rate of technological change accelerated, and “we accept as normal our cars, our airplanes, our complex telephone and energy networks, our microwave ovens, and the wonders of medicine and computers,” Harry said.

During his youth in Marble, Harry saw incredible changes in the way Americans lived. “We changed the ways we prepared and stored food; we changed the ways we heated our homes and did our laundry; we changed our bathing habits; we changed the ways we traveled both locally and long distance,” he said.

Lewensteins Had One of First Electric Refrigerators and Stoves

The Lewensteins had one of the first electric refrigerators in Marble, a “monitor,” top GE model, acquired about 1933, Harry said. “Monitor” means the compressor was in a circular housing on top of the refrigerated cabinet. This early refrigerator was replaced by a new Frigidaire model in the late 1930s and early ‘40s.

Before acquiring a refrigerator, the family relied on natural cold in the winter and on an “icebox” in the summer (blocks of ice cut from a nearby lake, stored in an “icehouse,” and delivered regularly by an iceman).

The Lewensteins also had one of the early electric stoves, according to Harry. The stove replaced an earlier wood stove, the universal cooking and heating appliance until then, at least in small communities that lacked city gas plants.

The family also had a two-burner kerosene cook stove in the basement, which Gertrude sometimes used for special tasks like canning fruits and vegetables.

In the late 30s, the first electric stove was replaced by a newer model that included a clock, timer, controls, protected heating elements, and generally all the other features accepted as normal today.

The family’s first automatic water heater—an electric unit—was acquired sometime in the mid-‘30s. Before, a special heating coil in the furnace provided hot water in the winter. And the Lewensteins fired up a small wood/coal stove in the basement to get hot water when the furnace was not being used or if they wanted more water than the furnace could produce.

Doing the Wash Was a Process

Harry describes Monday wash day. The hot water heater would be fired up, the laundry tubs lined up, and the old Maytag wringer-type washer moved into place by the water faucets.

“Clothes were first washed in soapy water and run through the wringer again before being rinsed in the first tub,” Harry said. “Then, they were run through the wringer again before being rinsed again in the second tub.

“Another run through the wringer, and they went into a basket to be carried upstairs from the basement and into the back yard to be hung out to dry. Each fill of water was used for several loads—whites first, then dark.

“I know that the washing machine was electrically operated—that is, the agitator was moved by an electric motor: but I can’t remember whether the wringer was electrical, or whether it had to be cranked by hand.”

The family got its first automatic washing machine in the late ‘30s but didn’t get a dryer until much later, Harry recalled.

The house had “gravity” central heating. A coal-fired furnace in the basement provided warm air, which rose into the house through a series of pipes to registers in each room.

Until the mid-‘30s, the furnace was completely hand-operated. Coal was delivered to the house and stored in a coal-bin next to the furnace. Several times each day, coal had to be transferred by shovel from the coal-bin to the furnace.

Maintaining a reasonably even temperature was a constant struggle, according to Harry. The arduous process involved poking the furnace fire, opening and closing a panel on the furnace to control the amount of air reaching the coal, and adding more coal.

The furnace also used wood, although wood fires were used mostly in the fall and spring when heat was needed only for short periods.

The first heating improvement was an automatic damper control. A thermostat was installed to control a mechanical device that opened and closed the panel that controlled air flow into the furnace.

Next, was installation of a “stoker,” which automatically supplied coal to the furnace as needed. The stoker required a special type of finely ground coal that could be conveyed from coal-bin to furnace via a “worm-gear” arrangement.

After Harry left for college at the University of Minnesota, the furnace was converted to burn oil. With oil, heat became automatic, requiring the setting of a thermostat for a comfortable temperature.

The house had one bathroom for the five inhabitants with a tub, basin, and toilet—no shower. Harry recalls taking tub baths once a week and, occasionally in the summer, going to the community shower rooms in the village hall, a block from the house.

“I don’t recall having showers in the two rooming houses in which I stayed while attending the University,” Harry said. “There were showers in the fraternity house where I stayed for one year; and, of course, there were showers during the 20 months that I was in the Navy. Showers were not considered a necessity until some time after World War II.”

Family Car Was Not a Given

Transportation also changed dramatically for the Lewensteins. The family car was not a “given” in the years leading up to World War II. All the professional and business families had cars, but many of the miners did not, Harry said. If they wanted to travel out of town, they used the train or Greyhound bus.

Harry recalls the first family car being a black Dodge touring sedan, about a 1925 model. It was replaced in 1935 by a new Dodge—a grey four-door sedan; and this car was replaced in 1939 by a green four-door Buick. I recall driving in my grandfather’s Buicks.

The family car was used only a couple times a week, Harry wrote. In winter, the family had to heat the garage (detached) before using the car, usually for 24 hours. At first, the heating was done with a small coach stove, later replaced by a small oil heater.

Routine car use included a weekly one-mile trip to Calumet to go to the bank. (I recall accompanying my grandfather to the bank one summer day) and a weekly Sunday evening trip to one of the neighboring towns to see a movie. Sam and Gertrude used the car for occasional trips each year to Duluth and for two trips each year to Minneapolis for market weeks.

The Duluth, Missabi, and Northern Railroad provided passenger service from Marble to Duluth. In the early 1930s, there were two trains each day. One train left Duluth in the morning, arriving in Marble about 11:30 a.m. and continued to its terminal in Coleraine.

The train left Coleraine in early afternoon, stopped in Marble about 1:30 p.m., and arrived in Duluth about 4:30 p.m. A second train did a reverse run. Sometime in the ‘40s, service was reduced to one train a day, and train service stopped completely in the 1950s.  I recall, again vaguely, riding the train.

Marble was a stop on the Greyhound bus route from Hibbing to Minneapolis. Three busses traveled each day to Minneapolis—one early morning, one about noon, and one in late afternoon. The trip took six hours. Service also was available to Duluth via Hibbing.

No air service to the Iron Range existed. Harry recalls his first flight from Minneapolis to Detroit about 1948. His first flight to Duluth was about 1953 after he had moved to California. Air service was extended to Hibbing and Grand Rapids some years later.

Few People Had Telephones

Communications also were significantly different. The Marble telephone exchange was on the second floor of the bank building next to Sam’s store, Harry said. It was a manual switchboard operated by an older woman who lived there.

Few people in Marble had telephones. The Lewensteins did not have a phone in the house until Harry was about 12, perhaps the late ‘30s. Long-distance calls were handled manually, first by the Marble operator, and then by operators in Coleraine, Grand Rapids, Duluth, and Minneapolis.

The old manual board was replaced by an automatic system in the late ‘30s or early ‘40s, with operator service after that provided from Coleraine.

Radio became a part of daily life in the 1930s. The Lewensteins always had a radio in the house—first a big Atwater-Kent cabinet in the living room, and later a more modern Stromberg-Carlson console with an automatic record changer included.

In the late ‘30s, the family acquired a small table-model radio for the kitchen. Jack Armstrong and the Lone Ranger were daily after-school companions while Harry was in grade school. There was no TV.

I Have Vague Childhood Memories of Marble

I have some vague recollections of Marble. My grandparents had a “large” house with my grandmother’s big garden between the house and the garage. A school sat directly across the street; my father and uncles attended the school before going to Greenway High School in Coleraine. My grandfather walked a block or two to his store, came home for lunch, and napped before returning to work.

One summer, I visited for about a week. I remember going to a library and traveling with my grandfather to a bank in Calumet, about a mile away. I went shopping at the local grocery store with my grandmother. I enjoyed attending the Marble Mallards amateur baseball games at the team’s beautiful field. The Mallards continue to compete with players from Coleraine and Grand Rapids. The team has qualified for several state amateur tournaments over the years.

Fishing at Twin Lakes (north Twin Lake and South Twin Lake), a little over a mile from town, was my grandparents’ recreation. They kept their boat in a small boat house. My father, and perhaps his brothers, swam across one of the lakes, I’m told.

On visits to Marble, my family visited Fairyland Park, a classic 1950s roadside attraction along U.S. Highway 169 that featured life-sized fairy-tale figures and scenes. The park operated from 1948 to 1972 and at one point had more than 6,000 annual visitors.

The park was located just west of Marble, about 80 miles northwest of Duluth on the west end of the Mesabi Iron Range.

Myrtle Gustafson created the park. Then, in summer 1960, Melvin and Faith Wick of Marble purchased the park, which needed maintenance and upgrading, according to a 2013 memoir by their son Tim Wick (www.jonandnancy.com ).

Life-style figures were arranged in about 40 scenes along a winding trail through the woods. The sculptures included nursery rhyme and fairy-tale sculptures as well as presidents.

The wicked-witch scene was the most popular attraction, according to Tim Wick. The head of the witch had transparent red eyes that were lit from behind. The head would occasionally move from left to right. It scared small children, but it was the most popular scene in the park.

Admission was 50 cents for adults and 35 cents for children. By the 1970s, the park was an anachronism, folk art of a different era, Wick wrote.

In summer 1984, if I recall correctly, I accompanied my father to Marble for its 75^th anniversary celebration. I wouldn’t call Marble a ghost town, but the town was nothing like the one I remembered from my childhood.

In his memoir, Harry describes the last time,1992, that he drove through the Iron Range. “Most of the towns were depressing,” he wrote. “There were many gaps on the main streets where buildings had been torn down; many of the remaining buildings were boarded up. Streets and sidewalks were badly in need of repairs. And most of the buildings still in use needed a coat of fresh paint.”

Harry noted all or most of the stores he remembered from his youth were gone. “The main street is deserted, and the mines are closed,” he said. “Property values are nonexistent. Workers must drive 15 or 20 miles to the few jobs available. There are a lot of senior citizens—retired people—who find living there both convenient and cheap. Shopping is done in nearby towns, mostly Grand Rapids and Hibbing, in local branches of large national chains.

In January 2010, Bruce visited Marble and shared his observations with his father. Harry’s response was, “It’s even bleaker than I remember.”

Yet despite the dramatic changes over the years, I maintain fond memories of Marble and appreciate my family’s roots.