Minnesota Mineral Resources Database

Minnesota minerals information spanning over a century

Mineral exploration has occurred in Minnesota for over 100 years, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR)'s stewardship role includes maintaining and sharing scientific and economic information gathered from these projects. The Minnesota Mineral Resources Database (MMRD) was created by the DNR and Minnesota Information Technology Services to preserve, curate, and distribute mineral exploration and other mineral resource-related documents to the public. The MMRD is a continuously growing archive, featuring thousands of never-before digitized public documents as well as ongoing migration and enhancement of its predecessor database, Minarchive.

The MMRD offers search and retrieval of historical and contemporary documents including, but not limited to, exploration reports, economic analyses, geophysical maps, geospatial data, drill logs, and assays. These public documents provide a rich source of information for future exploration, environmental and geologic research, and research on historical mineral resources. There are many, and increasing, drilling-related documents that are linked to physical materials stored in the DNR Drill Core Library, and most curated documents are stored at the DNR Lands and Minerals facility in Hibbing.

DNR staff curate documents in collections identified by project, company, or combinations of time, science, location, and other factors. Collection briefs are documents that provide an overview of each collection. Users can dive into the MMRD and explore the history of mineral exploration in Minnesota with a guided search of these collection briefs here.

The MMRD provides several ways to sort and retrieve individual documents or full collections. A user guide and Minarchive transition tipsheet are additional resources for getting started.