As Minnesota’s first iron ore mine, the Soudan Mine opened in 1884 and produced high grade, extremely hard ore until it closed in 1962. The next year, the United States Steel Corporation donated 1,200 acres including the mine to Minnesota for a state park, and in 2010, the state bought 2,848 more acres from U.S. Steel to protect the Vermillion Lake shoreline. In 2014, the Lake Vermillion State Park and Soudan Mine State Park were merged into the Lake Vermillion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park. Today visitors can visit the underground mine by riding in a cage suspended on a cable down to the lowest level where miners worked. It takes three minutes to descend to Level 27, some 2,341 feet, half a mile, below the surface. There, guides take visitors to see the rooms carved out of stone by the miners as they worked to remove the iron ore.