Rocky in his early days stood in front of the town post office.

Rocky Taconite

Silver Bay, Minnesota

In Silver Bay, "Taconite Capital of the World," the metal grin of Rocky Taconite brightens the faces of travelers on County Road 5.

Rocky was created in the industry-avatar spirit of Reddy Kilowatt and Mr. PG; he wears a miner's hat, holds a pickax in one gloved hand, and uses the other to wave to passers-by.

He celebrates taconite, an iron ore processed into pellets that saved Minnesota's mining region when the pure ores of the Iron Range had been exhausted.

Rocky was the vision of Otto Ringle, a dentist. Otto grew up near Bemidji, Minnesota, with its Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues, and had a dream that Silver Bay should have a similar civic ambassador.

On a sheet of paper Otto sketched, not a brawny Bunyan-esque taconite miner, but a humanoid taconite pellet with red boots and a smile. He convinced a local mining company to pay for it -- $500 -- and to donate a six-foot-high block of taconite to serve as a pedestal. This doubled the height of the statue, and kept it away from mischief-minded teens and clambering children.

Otto Ringle's original 1960 pencil sketch of Rocky.

A team led by Neil Forsberg hammered the taconite pellet-man into his round shape out of slabs of red-hot iron. "We beat the living daylights out of the pieces," Forsberg told the Lake County News Chronicle in 2018. "If you look at Rocky, you'll notice he's got a texture to him. That's from beating him." The pickax in Rocky's upraised hand belonged to Forsberg's grandfather, who brought it to Minnesota when he emigrated from Sweden.

The statue was placed atop his rock perch on October 10, 1964, and dedicated by Dr. Edward Davis, "the Father of Taconite." A plaque on Rocky's boulder states that he honors those who discovered how to change "a useless rock into a useful, valuable product." He acquired the name "Rocky Taconite" from Silver Bay resident Louis Stefanich in a contest, besting second-place finisher "Petey Pellet."

In 1965 Otto Ringle used some of his dental plaster to make a mass-production mold for a Rocky Taconite bobblehead, which had been carved out of soap by Marie Benson, Otto's mother-in-law. She baked the figurines in her oven, out of her own now-lost recipe that included real taconite. The Ringle kids were enlisted to hand-paint the bobbleheads and to glue alphabet macaroni letters spelling "ROCKY TACONITE" onto the figurines' silver helmets. They sold for $1. Surviving examples have become valued collectibles.

1964 news clipping of newborn Rocky fresh from the foundry.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Ruth Koepke, vice-president of the Bay Area Historical Society, was a fan of Rocky -- she described him to us as "a strange little rock man" -- and believed that the bobbleheads were worth reviving. A professional company did the work this time, and despite his makeover, wobbly Rocky has lost none of his so-weird-he's-cute appeal. The new bobblehead became a social media celebrity, appearing in photos taken as far away as Vietnam and Australia, carried by people who had never been to Silver Bay, Minnesota, or even to the U.S. These new fans knew Rocky better as a bobblehead than as a statue, which is a shame since he's a really great statue.

The modern bobbleheads -- as well as a range of other Rocky swag, including socks and LED nightlights -- can be purchased online, but it's far better to do so by visiting Silver Bay and the town's Tourist Information Center. There visitors can indulge themselves with Rocky souvenirs, see a display of vintage Rocky mementoes, learn about his outsize role in the community (he is, for example, an honorary alumnus of the town high school), pose with a 2-D Rocky made from a ping-pong table, and of course meet the jolly metal man himself.