A Region of Hope, A Region of Despair: Print Media, Geographical Imagination, and the Gogebic Iron Range Mining Boom.

The article focuses on the iron mining boom of the Gogebic Range along the Wisconsin-Michigan border in 1886 and its popular depiction. Details are given outlining how the region experienced a tremendous economic growth in the late 19th-century which let to large scale changes in both states. The author describes how the area was positively presented and marketed to prospective miners by speculators and by the mass media. Further discussion is given outlining how those portrayals shaped the economic development of the area, developing a popular imaginative conception of the region and its potential and encouraging migration. Examination is also given regarding the political geography of the region in response to the boom.