Taconite curtain

[exinilu]

[Taconite] Curtain is a play on words from [the iron curtain] (meaning russian and the eastern bloc countries of the cold war). It refers to the slow progress and backward tendencies of people from Minnesotas great white tundra. The boom in mining created many cities along the iron range of Minnesota that have Taconite is iron-bearing rock that is [mined in] northern Minnesota.

[Gregory]

A [symbolic], [ideological] and physical [boundary] separating the northeastern section of Minnesota from the rest of the state.