Built by the Munro Mining Company, the steel headframe of Iron County's deepest and most productive mine majestically rises 120 feet from a steel and concrete base. Iron ore was stored in six bins in the lower level and then dumped into ore cars pulled underneath.
Exploration by Richard L. and William H. Selden resulted in the discovery of good ore here in 1882. Its great depth and the lack of rail transportation from the site prevented the development of the mine for nearly ten years. In 1891 William Selden and Findley Morrison formed a partnership to work the Hiawatha Mine Number One site, and ore was first mined in 1893.
The Victor Schlitz Mining Company owned the mine until 1905 and the Thomas Furnace Company of Milwaukee until 1907. Then the Munro Mining Company of Buffalo, New York, acquired the mine and improved the underground workings, increasing the annual production to a uniformly high level. The M. A. Hanna Mining Company purchased the mine in 1929 and extensively improved its surface structures, including the nearby hoist house and dry house, and continued to extract ore until 1950. Eventually, the site was mined to eighteen levels of 2,100 feet. It shipped over 8.5 million tons of hematite ore between 1893 and 1950.