This was the starting age of railroads and trains, so by this time, they could easily transport ore by train to other places. The booming use of the railroad system quickly made companies that you are talking about rich, which expanded the railroad system even further. New equipment was being invented to get goods and items to their destination in the shortest amount of time possible. The place you are talking about however, is Lake Superior, where there were an abundance of steel ore, but it was very isolated from everything else, so they profited more off of the railroad system than average.
