Franz Dietrich von Ahlen was born in Walsrode, Germany, in 1856. His mother died when he was an infant, and he took her surname -- Hibbing -- when he crossed the Atlantic to seek his fortune. After working on a Wisconsin farm and surviving a shingle mill injury, he turned to timber cruising and eventually settled in Duluth in 1887. By 1892, Frank Hibbing was leading a party of 30 men through the wilderness of the Mesabi Range, cutting roads and reading the surface signs that told him vast iron deposits lay below. In July 1893, the townsite bearing his name was laid out. Feeling personally responsible for the community, Hibbing used his own money to build a water plant, an electric light plant, the first roads, a hotel, a sawmill, and a bank. He died of appendicitis in 1897, at just 40, having never seen his town reach its potential. That potential would prove staggering.

By 1915, Hibbing's population hit 20,000, and the mines were closing in from three sides. The Mahoning, Hull, Rust, Sellers, and Burt pits had already swallowed much of the surrounding landscape, and geologists confirmed what everyone suspected: the ore body extended directly beneath the town. In 1916, the Oliver Mining Company declared that North Hibbing had to go. Negotiations produced a remarkable deal: the company would fund construction of new civic buildings two miles south, near the village of Alice, and provide low-interest loans for merchants to rebuild. The relocation began in 1919. Workers used horses, farm tractors, and a steam crawler to drag structures along specially constructed wooden rails. Buildings too large to move whole were cut into pieces. Those too tall had workers riding the rooftops with long sticks to lift electrical lines as they passed underneath. Hibbing High School, the Androy Hotel, and the Village Hall rose in the new location with mining money. The last house left North Hibbing in 1968.

In 1914, a Swedish immigrant named Carl Wickman lost his job drilling in Hibbing's iron mines. Rather than moving on, he and Andrew 'Bus Andy' Anderson bought a Hupmobile and began shuttling miners the two miles between Hibbing and Alice for fifteen cents a ride. That improvised jitney service grew into the Mesabi Transportation Company, which eventually became Greyhound Lines -- the largest bus transportation company in the world. The Greyhound Bus Museum in Hibbing preserves this history, its collection anchored by the famous GM Scenicruiser that became an icon of American long-distance travel. From a laid-off miner's side hustle to a national transportation network: the origin story fits Hibbing perfectly.

Robert Allen Zimmerman moved to Hibbing from Duluth in 1948, when he was six years old. His father had contracted polio, and the family relocated to his mother's hometown, where his father and uncles ran a furniture and appliance store. The boy who would become Bob Dylan formed his first bands at Hibbing High School, playing covers of Little Richard and Elvis loud enough that a principal once cut the microphone at a talent show. Dylan left for Minneapolis in 1959, but the Iron Range never left him. His 1963 song 'North Country Blues' is a lament for mining towns in decline: 'So the mining gates locked and the red iron rotted / And the room smelled heavy from drinking.' His childhood home at 2425 7th Avenue East still stands, and the street has been renamed in his honor.

Hibbing sits at a hydrological crossroads found almost nowhere else in North America. The Northern Divide intersects the St. Lawrence Divide near town, meaning water falling on different sides of Hibbing drains to three separate destinations: the Arctic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. This quiet geographic fact hints at Hibbing's broader significance -- a small city in the boreal forest of northern Minnesota that has punched far above its weight. The winters are fierce, with freezes recorded in every month of the year and temperatures regularly plunging below minus 40. The Hull-Rust-Mahoning mine still operates at the edge of town, now producing 8.2 million tons of taconite pellets annually under Cleveland-Cliffs management. The pit that ate the original town continues to grow.