The Story
For a century, the land around Biwabik gave up iron ore and sand and gravel, feeding the mills that built America. When the mining economy faded, Minnesota's Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation agency — a state body funded largely by the taconite taxes mining companies pay in lieu of property tax — made an unlikely bet: that the scarred, beautiful country of the Range could sell recreation instead. Giants Ridge began as a ski hill; in 1997 came The Legend, a golf course good enough to draw players north from the Twin Cities.
Then architect Jeffrey Brauer walked the abandoned workings next door — an old sand and gravel quarry laced with iron-ore mining ground, all spoil piles and exposed cuts — and saw his real canvas. His stated vision was a public Pine Valley routed through the spoil piles: enormous fairways islanded in rust-brown sand, greens set against quarry walls, holes that no amount of shaping money could invent from scratch. The Quarry opened in 2003, and the golf world noticed almost immediately.
It has spent the years since at or near the top of every list that matters in Minnesota — Golf Digest's best public course in the state, Golfweek's best course you can play here — and its short par-4 13th, a 323-yard dare played to an enormous green on a ledge, earned a place in Golf Digest's 'America's Best 18 Holes Since 2000.' Not bad for a hole built on mine spoils.
That may be the best part of the story: this is public golf in the fullest sense, owned by the people of Minnesota and built from the wreckage of the industry that built the Range. Four hours from Minneapolis, framed in birch and pine and rust-colored sand, The Quarry is the up-north buddies trip that players talk about all winter.