On a wintry March day in 1931, a resourceful prospector named Julian Cross was drilling through ice and water into the bed of northwestern Ontario's Steep Rock Lake. He was drilling by hand, working in temperatures that dipped as low as 60° below zero, convinced that there was iron ore somewhere in the lake bottom. In the late afternoon. Cross's drill broke. He stamped his half-frozen feet on the ice. swore heatedly and quit for the season. Thanks in part to that disheartening setback, Steep Rock Lake is today one of the world's richest sources of high-grade iron ore.
Prospector Cross later found that he had been drilling that day into a seam of worthless rock. Had he continued much longer and learned the truth, he would undoubtedly have joined the long line of prospectors before him who had looked for iron in Steep Rock Lake and had given it up as hopeless. As it was, Cross left Steep Rock in 1931 still convinced that iron was there. He clung to the idea for five years, until he gathered fresh capital and headed back to the lake with better equipment and a full crew of workmen. That time, drilling in new positions, he struck a bonanza.
Lake Drained. Vast changes have been made in the Steep Rock countryside since Cross's discovery. The Seine River, emptying into the lake, has been rerouted. The lake has been drained of 121 billion gallons of water. Dredges have removed 59.5 million cu. yds. of silt from the bottom, laying bare great veins of chocolate-brown ore: high-grade hematite, so rich that it brings a premium of $1 a ton over the market price ($10.25) at Canadian and U.S. steel mills.
One mine, the Errington, has been operating in the Steep Rock basin for nearly nine years. Feeding only on surface ore scooped up with diesel shovels, it has already produced more than 8,000,000 tons. A second and bigger mine, the Hogarth, is now ready to produce. The first few truckloads of Hogarth ore were being stripped off the surface veins last week, and the mine is expected to be in steady operation next month. Two more mines, one of which will produce exclusively for Inland Steel Co., are being developed at other parts of the lake and will come into production by 1960.
Vein Probed. Steep Rock Iron Mines Ltd., largely financed by Canadian-born Financier Cyrus Eaton, has already invested upwards of $75 million in developing the site. Prospector Cross was rewarded for his discovery with a big block of Steep Rock shares (current price: $6.75); he is now a director of the company. Steep Rock President Morson Scarth Fotheringham confidently sets the property's eventual annual production at 10 million tons, worth $100 million or more. Engineers have probed 1,400 ft. down into the rich veins discovered by Julian Cross and still have not reached bottom. They now estimate the veins' depth at 3,000 ft. and the ore content at more than one billion tons, enough to keep the rich Steep Rock mines producing full tilt for at least a century.
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