Having been raised in the rural and tourist dependent Northwoods of Wisconsin, I’ve seen firsthand the tendency of communities to attempt to rekindle the industries of the past. The Upper Penninsula, a scant fifteen minute drive from my hometown of Eagle River, was the site of America’s first metals boom. One which extracted more wealth from the ground the famed California Gold Rush.

Those resources have long been drained, but the willingness of some to allow further exploitation through the potentially environmentally disastrous practice of sulfide mining seems to send the message that the UP has no other alternative when it comes to economic growth and viability. Others, like the people in the tiny town of Copper Harbor, on the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, see eco-tourism as an option. Small cities like Marquette and Houghton-Hancock have also seen potential in healthcare and manufacturing.

So it is on Minnesota’s Iron Range. The ways of the past offer the path of least resistance, while the road to the future lays in wait.

The Minnesota Center for Environmental Partnership outlines this clearly in a new study that finds new proposed mining developments not be the economic boon that some hope. It is important to take the time to consider the options, the costs, and the benefits before falling back on the past. Rural communities have more to offer economically than the harvesting of their natural resources.