In a Star Tribune report, Andrea Doerr, the interpretive program supervisor at Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park, said, "We get 300 to 400 people a day when we are really cooking." That's the volume the mine can handle at full daily capacity, cage loads of visitors riding 2,341 feet down the shaft and then nearly a mile by underground train to the Montana stope. It's also the volume most people on Lake Vermilion have never actually witnessed, because for most of the last seven years, that cage hasn't been running at all.
If you've been telling yourself you'll finally do the underground tour "one of these summers," this is the year, and the window is almost gone. Daily tours ended September 27. Since September 28, the mine has been on a weekends-and-holiday schedule through October 18, and then regular tours are gone until next Memorial Day.
Closed More Than It's Been Open
The mine has offered public tours since 1965, but ask anyone who's tried to plan a visit in the last decade and you'll hear some version of "it was closed when we went." That's not an exaggeration. Here's what the last seven years actually looked like, as the Timberjay reported:
| Year(s) | Status |
|---|---|
| 2019 | Last full, uninterrupted tour season |
| 2020–2023 | Closed for COVID and a $9.3 million shaft reconstruction between levels 19 and 24 |
| May 2024 | Reopened after a four-year hiatus |
| June 18, 2024 | Closed again after a storm dropped 7.5 inches of rain in 24 hours |
| 2024–2025 | Closed for flood cleanup, new trains, and an electrical system rebuild |
| 2026 | Full season, May 23 through October 18 |
The June 2024 flood wasn't a slow leak. A suspected lightning strike knocked out power to the pumping system for 11 to 12 hours, and water overwhelmed pumps on the 12th and 22nd levels before submerging the 27th entirely. Crews spent the better part of two years digging out silt, rebuilding the electrical system, and installing new trains before the mine could reopen this past May.
Add it up and the honest math is this: anyone who's lived on Lake Vermilion for less than about seven years has never had a normal chance to take this tour. Anyone who's lived here longer probably meant to go back at some point and then the mine simply wasn't there to go back to.
How the Fall Tour Schedule Changes
The mine doesn't close for the season the way a lot of Northland attractions do, with a final weekend and a sign on the door. It just changes shape. Tours ran daily through September 27. Since September 28, the schedule has shifted to Saturdays, Sundays, and Thursday-through-Sunday over MEA weekend in October, continuing through the 18th. After that, only educational and group tours are available, by reservation, year-round.
That means the easy, spontaneous version of this trip, the one where you decide on a Tuesday afternoon that you're going to drive over and go underground, has disappeared. What's left is a narrower set of dates that require checking the schedule first. The Minnesota DNR runs the current tour calendar and reservation system directly on the park's page, and it's worth a look before you plan around a day that turns out not to be running.
What Even Past Visitors Haven't Seen
If you did make it down before 2020, the mine you'd see now isn't quite the same one. The park added an updated introductory video and expanded exhibit space this season, including material on the site's early use by the Ojibwe, alongside the historic photos and equipment displays that were already there. What isn't running this year is the science lab tour, since the University of Minnesota's underground physics lab space is still being worked on separately from the main mine restoration.
There's also a reason to make a full day of it now that wasn't there before. A new 24-site pull-through campground opened June 12, with full electric hookups in 20, 30, and 50-amp service and Wi-Fi at every site, built to connect directly into the Prospectors ATV/OHV trail system. A planned trail link connecting that system into the towns of Soudan and Tower themselves is still in the works and wasn't finished in time for this season, so for now the campground and the trail network are there, but the last mile into town on wheels isn't yet.
Making the Trip Worth the Drive
The tour itself runs about 90 minutes. You go down in a cage on the original hoisting equipment, then board a train for the ride to the last section of the mine that was actively worked before it closed in 1962. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for kids 5 to 12, and free for anyone 4 and under, with departures roughly every hour between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. while the daily schedule is still in effect.
Pair it with lunch in Tower or Soudan rather than driving straight home. Tower Cafe is the breakfast stop locals point newcomers toward. Crescent Bar & Grill does the burger-and-onion-rings version of lunch. And if you'd rather sit lakeside with a view instead of a parking lot, The Vermilion Club serves pizza that's earned a reputation well beyond the marina it sits next to.
None of this requires a special occasion. It's a Saturday spent doing something that's been unavailable for most of the time you've lived here.
If you're finally making the trip down the shaft this week, take the extra ten minutes to drive the shoreline road on your way back. Chessica Reichert-Olson keeps an eye on what's quietly changing hands along that stretch of Lake Vermilion, and she's easy to reach if a "just looking" drive turns into an actual question.
