Upper Peninsula author Allan Koski displays his book “Empire Mine Cascade Range” during a recent interview in Negaunee. Koski was inspired to write about recent local mining history during his career at the Empire Mine in Richmond Township. The book is available at over a dozen area retail locations. (Journal photo by Lisa Bowers)

MARQUETTE — For over 50 years, the Empire Mine served as a major part of the geographic and economic landscape of Marquette County’s Richmond Township.

The mine, which was indefinitely idled in 2016, employed 1,396 members of the United Steelworkers and 207 salaried employees in its heyday, and tens of thousands of miners over the decades.

Allan Koski, a fourth-generation miner, recently launched “Empire Mine Cascade Range,” a book that memorializes with text and photos the contribution of “the extraordinary men and women who defied incredible challenges” to make the Empire an “enduring success story” for the country and the world.

“Throughout its storied life, the Empire Mine symbolized the industriousness and determination of the people of northern Michigan. It was a source of great regional pride that was featured in a half-dozen postcards,” Koski said in a written statement. “Very few families locally were not touched by someone who worked at the mine. From its earliest beginnings, mines such as the Empire fueled the industrial revolution that changed the face of America.”

The book also leads the reader through the rise of Michigan’s taconite industry, a history of the United Steelworkers on the Marquette Iron Range, the long and tragedy-filled road to improving mine safety, the demise of Michigan’s underground mines and a host of other subjects.

It is also a compilation of photos from the archives of the United Steelworkers, the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company and the Marquette Regional History Center.

He said the idea came to him several years ago, prior to his 2017 retirement from Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, where he worked as a senior staff engineer.

“While I was still working for Cliffs I sent a letter to Cliffs’ CEO saying, ‘When I retire, I want to write a book about the Empire.’ And so, the director of corporate communications sent me an email back and said: ‘Yeah, go for it.’ I was pretty intimately involved in it…. Basically I worked at the Empire Mine for 47 out of 52 years,” Koski said in a recent interview. “So, I felt that it was an important part of our history. That if I didn’t write it, it would probably be lost forever. Many, many of my best friends are members of the United Steelworkers, and so, I just felt like I have all of this information at my fingertips, more or less. And my institutional knowledge from working out there so long (means) I have seen the union side (and) the management side.”

Koski penned nearly 200 history- and photo-packed pages over the course of the last 10 months, with the help of graduate student Ali Fulsher, who edited much of the work.

He said they began the process in person, forging what he called “a unique synergy” but began communicating remotely amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

“She did not have the mining background and I did,” Koski said. “But she was really good at editing. She carried her editing to the nth degree. So we would … meet in the conference room at the library and work out the differences. But then the COVID thing came along. So we were sending things back and forth. She was still doing a phenomenal job. I would write something and send it to her — it became more arduous. But she was still doing a great job and we just kept working through the summer and pretty much worked through August until she went to the University of Minnesota to work on her graduate degree.”

Books have been flying off the shelves, with 450 sold since they first became available in November, Koski said.

He said the primary reason for writing the book was “there was a story that needed to be told.”

“Numerous books have been written about iron mining and most are company-sponsored histories and none are contemporary. Few tell the story of the gritty, courageous lives that the miners and their families lived as they struggled to build a new life in a foreign land with a language they didn’t speak,” Koski said. “Life on the iron range has always been a hard-won struggle and that is what the book is about. This is the miners’ story. As someone recently expressed to me, it’s the real story.”

Like many Marquette County natives, Koski comes from a family familiar with the perils of the mining trade.

“Wresting iron ore from the surrounding hills became tradition for generations of families like mine. It is the kind of tradition that continues to make America great,” Koski said. “Local miners provided the iron that built the skyscrapers in New York and Chicago, the rails that moved America west, won two world wars and provided the materials found in the millions of cars that travel our highways and byways.

“Largely unheralded, it is accomplished in a quiet unassuming manner in a corner of the nation given little thought by mainstream America. All three of my children worked at the Empire Mine. Armor plate made from Tilden Mine pellets protected my youngest son during two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.”

The author also chronicles the hard work and organizing that went into establishing a union in the 1930s and 1940s.

The book also details the emergence of women working on the Marquette Iron Range. It was a commonly held belief in the early 20th century that bringing a woman into an underground mine was bad luck.

In fact, an early handbook for the “general rules” of a local mine states:

“No woman or young person shall be allowed underground at any mine…. Violation of any rule will be sufficient grounds for dismissal.”

That all changed when three women were hired as general laborers at the Humboldt Mine Pellet Plant in the early 1970s, according to the book.

“Women on the iron range had always been respected for their toughness, standing alongside their male counterparts in the face of adversity,” Koski writes. “It was natural and inevitable that they would find their way into the workforce.”

The Marquette Regional History Center will host a virtual presentation featuring Koski’s book at 6 p.m. Feb. 10.

Koski will also be available at a book-signing event scheduled for Feb. 13.

“Empire Mine Cascade Range” is available for purchase in Marquette at Michigan Fair, Snowbound Books, Touch of Finland, Phil’s 550 Store, the Marquette Regional History Center; in Ishpeming at the Main Street Antique Mall, Da Yoopers Tourist Trap, White Bear Maple Products and Gifts, Johnson Drugs, Globe Printing, both Jubilee Foods locations, and Susie Q’s Antiques and Gifts; in Negaunee at Midtown Bakery and Cafe, Snyder Drugs and the Michigan Iron Industry Museum; and in the Escanaba and Gladstone area at the Canterbury Book Store, Mobile Mart and McDonald’s Gift Shop.

Those interested in a copy of the book can also purchase it by emailing koski at allankoski906@gmail.com.