Northlandia: Two Harbors museum documents 3M’s rocky start

Sep 09, 2023

TWO HARBORS — A former dentist's office here is now a shrine of sorts to a failed mine that turned into one of the largest and wealthiest companies in the United States.

At a small building on Waterfront Drive, a group of Two Harbors businessmen formed the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company in 1902. They planned to make millstones out of corundum mined from a site in Crystal Bay, about 40 miles farther up the Lake Superior shore.

What they unearthed, though, turned out to be mostly anorthosite — which has few commercial uses. They sold about a ton of it and made $20.

The company endured, though, as it pivoted to sandpaper manufacturing and beyond. It's since shortened its name to something more recognizable: 3M.

The building in which the globe-spanning firm was formed is now named after John Dwan, one of the company's founders and its first secretary. Dwan, a lawyer, practiced in a second-story office there. In the early 90s, it was converted from a dentist's office into the 3M Birthplace Museum, which is dedicated to the company and its history.

ADVERTISEMENT

"Everybody knows 3M as it is today, but the story of how it got started is just remarkable," said Ellen Lynch, executive director of the Lake County Historical Society, which operates the museum and two others north of Duluth. "Uncovering little bits of history like that is important in towns … like Two Harbors."

The company mined the Crystal Bay site anyway, despite the relative lack of corundum, and used the rock there to make sandpaper instead of millstones for a few years.

"Large grinding stones need very consistent and uniform abrasive qualities," Lynch explained. "So they thought, ‘Well, sandpaper is kind of taking off. If we crush it, maybe that will help us find a winning product.’"

A St. Paul businessman named Lucius Ordway — the eventual namesake for Ordway Center for the Performing Arts — invested more than $200,000 in the struggling company. He moved 3M to Duluth in 1905, where it began using imported rock, and opened a sandpaper plant — the company's first manufacturing building. The company moved to St. Paul in 1910 and, ultimately, to Maplewood, Minnesota, where it maintains a large campus that hosts thousands of employees.

In 1913, the company opened a small lab in its St. Paul factory where staff would test different natural and synthetic sandpaper materials, measuring their abrasiveness. It was the company's first "innovation lab," according to Lynch.

The Two Harbors museum's exhibits were mostly created and furnished by 3M itself. Most tout products that were conceived years and years after the company moved out of town, such as an array of Scotch tape products. Still, the museum has a handful of artifacts from 3M's time as a Lake County venture.

In one corner sits Dwan's desk, adorned with a period-appropriate typewriter and other office accouterments. It's likely the desk at which Dwan signed the company's articles of incorporation alongside 3M's other founders.

Nearby is a pulley from the Crystal Bay crushing facility the company installed to process mined corundum, anorthosite and other rock before shipping it to the Duluth plant. Mounted below the wheel are photos of the crushing plant as it stood in 1905 or thereabouts, correspondence using 3M's original letterhead, and a sample of sandpaper made from rock found at the original mine.

ADVERTISEMENT

Near the bottom of the exhibit is a small sample of scraggly black corundum alongside a much larger lump of speckled gray anorthosite.

"You can feel the difference," Lynch said of the two stones. "Smooth versus not."

In a side room sits a life-sized mannequin of Dwan himself, complete with suit, glasses and face mask to safeguard against COVID-19.

Dwan stuck with the still-reeling company as it worked to recover from the anorthosite discovery, Lynch explained. Some of the original investors sold some of their stock at a loss. Anecdotes about early 3M leaders paying for shots of whiskey with stock certificates, rather than cash, at Two Harbors bars are more folklore than fact, according to Lynch.

"It was a lot of struggle," she said, "in those early days."

ADVERTISEMENT