A few minutes walk by foot around the site at Stråssa moves the mind to the dawn of the space- and nuclear age, the era of Sputnik, Flash Gordon and Jacques Tati's "Mon Oncle". The time when Khruschev banged his shoe in the desk in the UN. A time of penicillin to the public, the time when technology and industrialism was man's grand hope for a better world and a bright future...

Stråssa and its surroundings have been mined for a long time, but the operation came to a halt in 1923 due to the recession. The mine owner surely thought that the operation should be suspended just for a short time. However, as the iron contents in the ore was fairly low, the times never got "good enough" and mine did not reopen and all workers were fired.

Boosted by the high post-WWII steel demands in the early 1950s and emerging more efficient ore enrichment methods, mining giant Gränges decided to take a big bet by turn Stråssa into "The world's most modern mine". The old, fairly large all-wooden mining site was torched to ashes and Gränges sold their 50% stake in the other giant LKAB (a business decision that may sound en par with Decca's to turn the early Beatles down) and spent money big time, both on Stråssa and the Liberian joint-venture LAMCO with the US giant Betlehem Steel.

Finally, the new ultra-modern mine at Stråssa opened in 1959 and it was obvious that no effort had been spared to expose the collective enthusiasm of the ore companies in the late 1950s. The entirely site ultimately ended up as a real orthodox study of design fashion of the time.

However, as with several other mining investments in the 1950s, the time of real joy was short as dark clouds started to form in the early 1960s with falling ore prices and lethal competition from the new giant mines in West Africa, Brazil and Australia. Nothing could change the fact that far more rock than iron was brought up - the average net iron contents was just around 30%, sometimes even lower than that. The vast moon-like landscape formed by the adjacent enormous waste-rock dump gives a sign of reality to this figure.

The figures started to turn seriously red around 1970 and the steel crisis of the 1970s hit Stråssa and other small- and mid-size mines, far from the coast real hard. After several turns during the end of the 1970s, it was decided that Stråssa was to be closed in 1982 as a part of a grand plan, where a new state-owned consortium SSAB was about to overtake the remains of the once so wealthy Gränges steel- and iron ore operations. The crisis deepened and the mining operation at Stråssa de-facto ceased already in 1981. After just twenty years of operation, this highly modern and efficient mine was closed. This time, no one ever thinking it would ever be opened again.
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