A new route through the Iron Range is going up, fast.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation has until the end of next year to divert Hwy. 53 between the towns of Eveleth and Virginia, away from the rich mineral deposits under the current roadway.
Meeting that deadline has meant building quickly and building tall — the new route calls for the construction of the highest bridge in Minnesota.
Planners were drawing up blueprints before the final route was officially selected. The state put in an order for 10 million pounds of U.S. steel from a foundry in Wisconsin before the environmental surveys were finished. By the second week of March, with snow still on the ground, the bridge footings were taking shape on the edge of the Rouchleau Pit, just east of Virginia.
"It's the most challenging job and probably the most rewarding job that I and the whole team have worked on," said Patrick Huston, MnDOT's project manager for the Hwy. 53 relocation. "Everybody had the same jersey on."
Half a century ago, Minnesota built a highway through the Range, across land it didn't own, directly over an iron deposit. A few years ago, the mining company that owns the land announced that it needed access to the ore. The road would have to be moved, and Huston's team would have to find a way to make that happen.
Nothing about the project has been easy. Every proposed route came with headaches — one route would have carried traffic through a working pit mine; another would have sent Iron Range commuters miles out of their way.
In 2014, MnDOT settled on the Rouchleau Pit route, knowing it would mean building a very tall bridge on very hard rock across a quarry that also serves as Virginia's drinking water source. Crews have worked for months to drive the bridge pilings through discarded quarry rubble and some of the hardest rock on the planet.
