New York Mills began to attract the Finns. Not much later, however, Crow Wing was to play another role with its mining activities, and in that, too, the Finns had their frustrating share.

In the Cuyuna Iron Range, which begins some 15 miles northeast of Brainerd, mining operations on a large scale were started shortly before World War I, with as many as 44 mines being opened. On the basis of the first shipments of ore that were made, the resources were estimated at some 300,000,000 tons, and in three decades of operations 50,000,000 tons of ore were actually shipped out. In 1940 it was estimated that there were still 1,000,000,000 tons of ore in the Range. Gust Aakula, in an article in the Duluth Industrialisti of 27 January 1956, summarizes the early history of this find and the Finnish role in it:

"In 1876 a forest 'cruiser', George W. Jenkins, came from Canada to this area. He continued his profession of estimating forestry operation potentials for lumber companies for some years, after which he bought land in Crow Wing County, built a home and started farming.

"In 1893, while he was looking for one of the boundary points of his land, where sections 28, 29, 32 and 33 join, he saw several deep pits in the area. They had obviously been dug a long time previously, for they had crumbled and the wooden props had rotted. In one pit he found a pile of strange-looking rock, parts of a windlass, and an old bucket. He took the bucket home, and he used parts of the windlass to make a handle for his grindingwheel.

"He often wondered why the pits had been dug, and a decade later the puzzle began to clear up. According to Jenkins himself, a man named Henry Pajari appeared at his farm one day in 1903 and stayed the night. He said he had come to look at the land he owned in sections 28-32, where he had for several years looked for iron ore and where he had even dug some exploratory pits with some helpers. He said that he had lost his expensive magnetic dip needle in 1882 and had given up digging when water seeped into the pits and his comrades, who had loaned him funds, began to doubt his explorations.

"According to the Crow Wing County Registry of Deeds, Pajari had in 1883 bought 160 acres of land in sections 28 and 32. Not much was known about him, however, until he visited Deerwood in 1930 and went to the offices of the Deerwood Enterprise, where he was interviewed by the editor. According to that interview, (published on May 9th) Pajari, the first man to believe that there was iron ore in the region, had been 25 years old in 1882 and had been riding a slow train from the mines where he had been working in Michigan to his homestead in Otter Tail County. When the train stopped near Deerwood, the last car was halted in a section of line cut through rock, and Pajarl's attention was attracted to this rock formation. He picked up some and saw that it was precisely the same kind as the rich iron-bearing kind he had learned to identify in Marquette County, Michigan. West of Deerwood, Pajari saw more of the same kind of rock, and he began to believe that the area had to contain iron.

"When he returned to his job in Michigan, Pajari told his comrades of his discovery and urged them to join him in exploring the region for a few months. They loaned him some money, on the condition that if he succeeded in finding what he was looking for, they would share in the profits. He bought a compass, a winch, a tent, the necessary tools and food supplies, and persuaded one Herman Bjorklund to go with him for a daily pay of $1.50. So the men went to Deerwood, in 1882, and began to work in the area which later received the name Cuyuna Range.

"Pajari began to dig in three separate places, but when water always began to seep into them he was unable to dig further. Bjorklund wanted to quit, and besides, it was getting difficult to borrow more money, so Pajari decided

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