The Gogebic Range is a mountainous area at the far western tip of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Located on the south shore of Lake Superior, it extends west from Lake Gogebic through part of Bayfield County in Wisconsin. The Gogebic Range includes the communities of Ironwood, Wakefield, Bessemer, and Ramsay in Michigan, Hurley in Wisconsin, and the ski country area of Big Powderhorn. The term Gogebic is Ojibwa for "where trout rising to the surface make rings in the water."^{[citation needed]} The Gogebic Range experienced a speculative iron boom in the mid-1880s, and saw recurring booms and busts from 1884 to 1967.

The initial boom in the Gogebic Range came between 1884 and 1886. The discovery of high-grade Bessemer ore on the Gogebic Range and the consequent unfolding of vast possibilities led to a speculative craze the like of which has had no parallel in Michigan or Wisconsin. While it lasted, fortunes were made and lost within a month or even overnight. On September 16, 1886, the Chicago Tribune reported: “Hundreds of people are arriving daily from all parts of the country and millionaires are being made by the dozens ... The forests have given way to mining camps and towns, and a most bewildering transformation has taken place. In the palmy days of gold mining on the Pacific slope there is no record of anything so wonderful as the Gogebic.”