The Iron Range is collectively or individually a number of elongated iron-ore mining districts around Lake Superior in the United States and Canada. Much of the ore-bearing region lies alongside the range of granite hills formed by the Giants Range batholith. These cherty iron ore deposits are Precambrian in the Vermilion Range and middle Precambrian in the Mesabi and Cuyuna ranges, all in Minnesota. The Gogebic Range in Wisconsin and the Marquette Iron Range and Menominee Range in Michigan have similar characteristics and are of similar age. Natural ores and concentrates were produced from 1848 until the mid-1950s, when taconites and jaspers were concentrated and pelletized, and started to become the major source of iron production.

The mining districts are in Minnesota's Arrowhead Region. The region's far eastern area, containing the Duluth Complex along the shore of Lake Superior, and the far northern area, along the Canada–U.S. border, are not associated with iron ore mining, but deposits of copper, nickel, and cobalt at the northern boundary of the Duluth Complex, where it meets the iron formations, are being considered for mining.

From a geological perspective, Minnesota's Iron Range includes these four major iron deposits:

Within Minnesota, "The Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation is a State Department, established by the legislature of 1941 to render public service through research and the actual development of all the state's resources both natural and human." The Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB), known as "the I-triple-R-B" or Iron Range Resources, is an economic development agency funded partly by state taxes on taconite-producing companies and charged with creating jobs.

There have been attempts to expand mining for other metals to areas near the Iron Range, most notably with the Twin Metals mine, but these have received pushback from the federal government and environmentalists because of environmental concerns resulting from their proximity to national protected lands.

Geologically, the Mesabi, Gunflint, and Cuyuna Ranges in Minnesota belong to the Paleoproterozoic Animikie Group, while the Vermilion Range is Neoarchean. The geologic history of the formations containing iron are typical of banded iron formations worldwide.

Before the 19th century, Native American groups mined native copper on the Keweenaw Peninsula. William Austin Burt discovered iron ore in the Marquette Range near Negaunee, Michigan in 1844. Iron ore was discovered on the Menominee Range in 1867 and on the Gogebic Range in 1884. It was first discovered in Minnesota on the Vermilion Range in 1885, the Mesabi Range in 1890, and the Cuyuna Range in 1903.

Underground mines were developed to remove the valuable ore of most ranges. But on the Mesabi and Cuyuna Ranges, iron mining operations evolved into enormous open pit mines, where steamshovels and other industrial machines could remove massive amounts of ore. "Large-scale commercial production of magnetite taconite ore on the Mesabi Range started in 1956 at the Peter Mitchell Mine near Babbitt, Minnesota."