Cliffs has a long history of providing a safe workplace, striving to be good stewards of the environment, and establishing strong and respectful relationships with our communities. These fundamentals provide the foundation upon which we manage our business.

Our Core Values contribute to our ability to overcome business challenges. They guide us when we have to make difficult decisions in complex situations. They also help us to maintain the trust we have built with our stakeholders and with each other.

A History of Cliffs: 1847-2017 Timeline

Cliffs celebrated our 170th year as a company in 2017. We are a company that pre-dates the first Industrial Revolution, with leaders who navigated business through wars, prosperity and depression eras. Now in the New Millennium, we can thank the ingenuity and hard work of our employees over the years for helping to make us into the largest iron ore producer in North America. We are very proud of the fact that steel starts here at Cliffs.

Cleveland Iron Company is founded by eleven men from Cleveland, OH who seek to develop the hard hematite and magnetite ores of the Negaunee outcropping in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

In the following years, the first railway is built on the Iron Range and the Sault Ste Marie Canal opens, built with support from Cleveland Iron Mining, whose first iron ore shipment is 120 tons. Cleveland Iron Mining pioneers use of the diamond drill, getting cleaner drill cores and gaining accuracy on siting locations for underground mines.