Manganese is a ghost town and former mining community in the U.S. state of Minnesota that was inhabited between 1912 and 1960. Built in Crow Wing County on the Cuyuna Iron Range about 2 miles (3 km) north of Trommald, Minnesota, it was named after the mineral found near the town. The Trommald Formation beneath the town and the adjacent Emily District constitutes the main ore-producing unit of the North Range district of the Cuyuna Iron Range and the largest resource of manganese in the United States. At its peak around 1919, Manganese had two hotels, a bank, two grocery stores, a barbershop, a show hall, and a two-room school, and housed a population of nearly 600. After World War I, the population of Manganese went into steady decline as mining operations shut down; the community was abandoned, and in 1961 the town was formally dissolved. In 2017 some of the land was redeveloped for primitive campsites. (Full article...)