Elcor is a ghost town in the U.S. state of Minnesota that was inhabited between 1897 and 1956. It was built on the Mesabi Iron Range near the city of Gilbert in St. Louis County. At its peak around 1920, Elcor had two churches, a post office, a general store, a primary school, a railroad station and its own law enforcement, and housed a population of nearly 1,000. Elcor was a mining town, built by the mining company to house its workers. People were allowed to own their homes, but the land on which the houses stood belonged to the company. In the early days, houses were made of wooden boards and surrounded by a four-board-high fence fronted with a boardwalk. Most of the streets were dirt roads. The townspeople were pioneers and immigrants, largely Croatian, Slovenian, Finnish, Italian, German, Scandinavian and English (especially Cornish). After the last mine closed in 1954, the residents were ordered to vacate the property; by 1956, Elcor was completely abandoned.
