Iron Man (Minnesota statue)

The Iron Man statue is a figure of an iron miner located at the entrance to the Minnesota Discovery Center 1.28 km outside of Chisholm, Minnesota. It is 85 ft including the 36 ft, and was completed in 1987 out of iron ore by Jack E. Anderson. The brass and copper 36' Iron Man is balanced atop a 49' structure of steel and is a tribute to the men who labored in the open pit mines when the mining industry boomed on the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. The work is titled The Emergence of Man Through Steel and it is the fifth largest free-standing statue in the United States.

Sculpture
The statue was created by Jack E. Anderson of Lake Linden, Michigan, who also created a Bishop Baraga sculpture in L'Anse, Michigan. Anderson said that the iron worker's posture represented the weariness of a day spent working in mines. The Ironman's facial features were taken from the miner Daniel Tolonen, an immigrant from Finland who resided in and is buried in Chisholm MN. Daniel Tolonen was present with five generations of his family on the day the statue was dedicated July 4, 1987, along with Governor Rudy Perpich and U.S. Representative James Oberstar among the day's speakers. It measures 85 ft tall, from the base to the top of the helmet.