ot-------mining memories

from website "http://www.miningartifacts.org/"

I live right on the Gogebic range in Northern WI. The area is littered with former iron mines. This headframe still stands a few miles from my house.

I checked out the mining artifacts site, was kind of surprised they have so few pics from Nevada. Here is the Power House at McGill Nv circa 1915

WOW that picture of the beam! Imagine rigging that with what they had!

I recall seeing a picture of a cast iron walking beam which had failed, breaking across the center trunnion. The beam was used above a mine shaft at a mine in England or Wales. The writeup accompanying the picture was of a tragic event. The beam was used to work either a pump rod, or a man-lift (series of platforms on a rod that worked like a "slide valve" for raising or lowering men in a shaft). Either way, the beam broke and blocked any access to the shaft. There was a mess of building rubble from the brickwork used to support the bearings (plummer blocks ?) that the beam trunnion ran in, as well as the beam itself. No quick means of rigging the beam away from the shaft head, and no alternative means of getting the men and boys trapped below existed. The result was a whole shift of men and boys, were trapped below in the mine workings, and quite a number died.

The mining pictures are otherwise quite interesting. I always marvel at "what once was", the fact that mines often had massive winding engines, boiler plants, powerplants, and (in the case of coal mines), breakers. Aside from a few foundations and an occasional lone masonry smokestack, often little remains of the mines.

Year ago, when I was wild, young, and single, a group of us rode our motorcycles to a small iron mining town on the Wisconsin/Michigan line. We were intent on partying, and were welcomed by the relatives of some of the bikers, who were iron miners. Things escalated, and the local law showed up. Realizing they had a rabble of bikers and iron miners, the law ( a lone officer) called for backup. We kept partying in the VFW hall, out into the street, and were mainly just a bunch of rowdy, happy people.
Reinforcements for the lone officer arrived in the form of two cruisers with Michigan State Police. The law turned off the juke box, hollered for quiet, and demanded we all leave town immediately or be placed under arrest. This announcement was met with disproval from all sides, and some of the old iron miners were ready to take on the state police, aided and abetted by a number of the bikers, and hissing and booing and insults were flying from wives, girlfriends, and everyone in general. The state police came to a hurried compromise: they would escort us out of the town (hardly worthy of the name as it was such a small place, an old iron mining company settlement), and take us to a location where we could party. Supposedly, if we came back into town, we'd be placed under arrest. So, the cops led a column of motorcycles out to an abandoned open pit iron mine site. It was a wild and beautiful place. There was little evidence of the mine's actual workings other than the huge crater in the ground and piles of rock tailings or spoil and an occasional rotting crosstie or piece of wire rope sticking out of the rock piles.

The mine workings formed a huge crater with benches at each elevation. No idea how deep or wide/long it was, but the bottom had flooded ages ago. There were haulage roads and old railroad beds to get to the bottom, and soon enough people were headed there to skinny dip. Someone had a pickup with an 8 track cassette player (remember those ?), and two large speakers were setup. The 'Stone and similar music was soon blaring and echoing in the old mine pit. We pitched our tent well into the woods, knowing the general craziness would soon include people attempting to jump fires on Harleys and doing various wild maneuvers on them. We dug some fire pits and soon enough, a few pickups from town brought cordwood, two dressed deer (never mind that it was not hunting season), black steel pipe to spit the deer on, and kegs of beer and ice. We wound up partying at that mine pit for two full days, non stop. My buddy and I plus the girls we were with were sharing a small tent (predating the "dome" type tents, this was similar to an overgrown pup tent). On the third night, a line of thunderstorms moved in, and come daylight, we broke camp and left, lashing our gear to our motorcycles and riding about 150 miles home in heavy rains. The rest of the crowd was still there when we left.

In recent years, thanks to the internet, I was able to research that town and the mines that once were there. Both underground and surface mines existed there at one point, and the physical plants to work those mines was quite extensive. Even in the 1970's, with a few open pit mines working in that area, there was little evidence of the kind of physical plants shown in the photos in this thread.

I always remember that iron mining country. Back in the 70's, iron mining was still going and the major means of employment. One underground mine existed on the Marquette Range, and it was the Mather B in Ishpeming, MI. Every day, about 3 PM, they'd blast down in the workings of the Mather B, and you felt it all over town.
Now, the Mather B is history, and a museum is nearby. Cornish Pasties (meat pies you can take with you for lunch and eat on the job) are one enduring legacy of the underground iron mining. Cornishmen, known in the region as "Cousin Jacks", were the mine supervision in the iron mines and brought the pasties with them to the USA. Finnish immigrants formed a major part of the workforce in the UP iron mines, and it is an interesting mix of cultures that resulted in that region.

We used to ride out past the Barnes-Hecker memorial and I'd stop to read it and reflect about the disaster. Barnes-Hecker was an underground iron mine. Around WWI, the workings pushed out under a lake. The lake broke through and flooded the workings. Of a whole shift of men working below, only two survived. They were younger men and climbed nearly 1/4 mile of ladder rungs on the wall of the shaft. All the wives in a whole mining settlement were suddenly made widows.

The iron mining country, like the coal country, was hard country for the people who built their lives around mining. It is all changed now, with few iron mines working in Marquette, Gogebic, Iron, or the other ranges. Similarly, the hard coal region of Pennsylvania, aptly named for more than the hard (anthracite) coal, has many towns eking out an existence. I heat my home with anthracite coal, getting 7 tons delivered into my bunker each summer. As I wing shovels of the coal into the firebox of our heating boiler, I invariably think of the hard coal country and the miners. Sometimes, bits of wood will turn up in the coal and I wonder if those are from mine props or other uses in the mines. Most of the coal I get is "reclaim" coal, gotten by a new generation of coal operators from the culm banks (piles of coal and rock left where the old breakers had been). I find myself wondering if that coal had been picked over by the breaker boys of ages ago, or brought up from an underground mine.

I burn coal as it is a locally produced fuel, heat the house cheaper and better than fuel oil, and probably because I am something of a cantankerous, contrary dinosaur myself.

I have been researching White Pine County Nevada for 15+ years, I started focused on one particular topic, but the stories of the towns of Ruth, Ely, and McGill, and the surrounding mines, are so intertwined that you have to study them all. Like most western mining towns there are the stories of shootings, stabbings, and hangings, all tame subjects compared to the industrial accidents at the mines and smelter. If I ever compile it into a book, the title should be "1000 Gruesome Ways to Die", 10 men at a time blown up by dynamite, crushed by trains, burnt alive by splashed molten slag or copper, falling into the copper crucibles, falling into the crusher, caught in machinery and beaten to death, the list goes on and on.

One of the earliest tragedies, and examples of the callusness of mankind, is the story of the collapse at the Chainman mine. They knew the miners were still alive, but they were all Chinese, and the decision was made that it would be too dangerous to risk the lives of "white" men to rescue them, so they blew the portal and sealed them in. Sometime in the late 90's, working as an open pit mine, the Chinese miners were finally found, and given proper burials.

Joe Michaels: The incident you refer to may have been the diaster at the Levant tin mine in Cornwall.
The disaster at Levant - Mining Magazine
The site is open to visitors and the winding engine is still run occasionally. I visited two years ago and the disaster is still commemorated yearly.

All this puts me in the mind of Jim Ford's "Harlan County ". It's well worth a listen.

Regards Tyrone.

We have been camping next to an abandoned iron mine in northern NY for the last couple summers. While the output of the Adirondack mines was no where near that of the Midwest, the ore was virtually phosphorus free. The mine in Lyon Mountain closed in 1967. The campsite occupies the former personnel shaft and supporting bulding. The current owner leases the surrounding land for an atv club, so we can ride around and explore the old mine openings- safely of course! There's cool history all over, and we are always finding new things. Quite the death toll in the mine tho, a different era! I may invest in some proper climbing gear, there is so much to explore!

The incident Joe mentioned about holing thru to lake water is interesting, tho not unheard of. One book about the Adirondack mines I have entitled "Through the light hole" by Peter Farrel (primarily about the port henry/moriah NY mines) mentions an incident when they blasted into unknown mine workings, which were full of water. No one was in the mine during blasting, but the ensuing flood caused some damage. Also stated was that, on abandoning the mines, all maps were sent to the federal mine map repository in Pittsburgh PA. So I Googled the federal mine map repository, and it had a "Request a map" section on their website. A few days later a thumb drive arrived in the mail with 300+ maps of the Lyons Mountain mines ! Woo-hoo!

Old iron mines are cool!

I asked a guide at an old Iron mine in the UP how many people died in the mind. The number was around 2000 as I recall but they hadn't keep records for the first 100 years that the mine was in operation so no one knew how many died in the first 100 years. There are some very small towns in the UP with very large grave yards.

Tunneling into a lake from below reminds me of the Lake Peigneur Salt Mine drilling accident in 1980. An oil drill rig on a barge drilled into a working salt mine shaft.
Good footage in the short (4min) video, very impressive.
YouTube

The posts about underground mines suddenly flooding brings to mind another disaster; The Knox Mine. The Knox Mine Disaster occurred in the 1960's, if I recall correctly. Knox Mine was an underground hard coal (anthracite) mine located in Pennsylvania. By the 1960's, the use of anthracite coal as a heating fuel had been greatly reduced due to people converting to fuel oil or natural gas. The Knox Mine had gone through a succession of owners, and the last of them were said to be somewhat shady. The coal seam the Knox Mine was working had pushed out towards the Susquehanna River, and there had been some debate as to how much of a safety margin in terms of depth below the river bed and distance needed to be maintained to avoid the river breaking into the mine workings. This margin had been reduced, and whether it was being followed at all was questionable. Needless to say, the Susquehanna River suddenly burst into the mine workings. As in the Lake Peigneur incident, a whirlpool formed, and water flooded the mine almost instantly. Some miners managed to escape and some were trapped in one small area of the mine. One miner, being slight of build, managed to wriggle up an exploratory or vent shaft and alerted people on the surface to the fact a part of miners was still alive and trapped. These miners were eventually resued when a shaft was drilled down to them. In the balance of the mine workings, many miners died.

The Susquehanna River kept flowing into the mine workings, and efforts were made to stop it. At one point, railroad hopper and gondola cars filled with stone rubble were dumped off the end of the rails into the vortex. Nothing seemed to be able to stem the flow. It took some days for things to quiet down, and the determination was made that it would be impossible to unwater and re-enter the mine to recover the remaining bodies.

The Knox Mine disaster pretty much spelled the end for underground mining of anthracite coal on a large scale in Pennsylvania. The flooding extended through the workings of the Knox Mine into some other mine workings, and shut down a large percentage of the underground mining for good.

In a polar opposite to the Knox Mine, Centralia, Pennsylvania had to be abandoned due to a fire in coal mine workings under the town. Years ago, the town ordered the d burning of the debris in the town dump. This was a routine thing, but on this particular occasion, the burning of the material in the dump ignited a coal seam which was exposed in the town dump. Probably, the town dump was an open pit that would eventually be capped with soil when it was filled with garbage and debris. In excavating the dump pit, the coal vein was exposed. The dump fire ignited the coal seam and efforts to extinguish the fire by the local fire departments were ineffective. The fire smouldered along the coal seam under the town, following abandoned mine workings, and soon, carbon monoxide was percolating up through the soil and into people's basements.

More efforts were made to extinguish the underground fire, including drilling boreholes and diverting streams into them. Various schemes to put the fire out were devised, but all were either not guaranteed to do the job, or were too expensive. Eventually, the town had to be abandoned. That was the other extreme from a mine flooding.

Years ago, I flirted with the idea of getting a law degree, hoping to combine my engineering career with the practice of the law. I did first year law by correspondence, and decided lawyering was not for me, realizing my heart and strength lay in engineering and machine work. As all first year law students do, I studied Tort Law. I enjoyed the study of Tort Law, and remember some of the landmark cases I read. One of them, coming from England, established "the Rule of Rylands". In that case, mine workings were flooded when the owners/builders of a mill failed to use puddled clay to make the bottom of a mill pond. The mine workings below the location of the mill pond were flooded and had to be abandoned. The case established a rule of law that holds anyone who contains or diverts natural water in an artificial way responsible for damages resulting from the release of that water. Don't quote me on my rehash of "Rylands". Interestingly, in the USA, in some states where mining was a major industry, the Rule of Rylands was cast aside at the behest of the mining interests.

sandiapaul said:

WOW that picture of the beam! Imagine rigging that with what they had!

Click to expand...

Presumably, the brickwork was carefully broken to permit entry of the beam. Is it also possible that the beam shown slid out of the enginehouse accidently, breaking the wall as it exited?

-Marty-

First pic is of a steam shovel working at Copper Flat circa 1915, this was the beginning of open pit mining in this area. The first steam shovels were purchased used from the newly completed Panama Canal project, shipped to California, then hauled out here by train. Copper Flat was west of Ely, it along with the Kimberly, Giroux, Ruth and other mines, is now a massive open pit copper/gold mine.

The second picture is an extremely rare pic of the Japanese women and children in McGill, photographic evidence of their community here is scarce. Certainly you all know about the internment of the California Japanese, how many here know the story of the internment of the Japanese miners/smelter workers/RR workers from White Pine County Nevada? The accepted story locally is the feds showed up, found some subversive activity, arrested a few, then interned them all, its a nice simple, easy, not our fault story. Research tells a different story.

If you want a long in depth scholarly read, https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4216&context=rtds

The short synopsis, in my words, with research currently not available online from another researcher that had access to the FBI files. The only reason the copper camps of Nevada even made it onto the feds radar was one, as yet un-named, person was writing letters to the FBI with stories of the Japanese workers setting dynamite charges along the railways and in the smelter, as copper was a war commodity, it got their attention. Whether the mine/smelter owners were tipped off that the feds were coming, or due to the sentiments of the other workers, and the generalized anti-japanese mass hysteria of the time, all the japanese workers were fired a day or two before the arrival of the federal agents, and the company proclaimed they would no longer hire japanese workers.

The FBI records show that although they initially arrested and detained for questioning the 2 main "jap bosses", they found nothing to substantiate the claims in the letters, and after searching the japanese homes they found no substantial evidence of subversion. The logic of why they decided to then arrest the whole community is not outlined in the FBI files, my assumption is that it was based on they were now all unemployed, they might now be disgruntled over that fact, it was predominantly single men, and of course, better safe than sorry.

The Japanese community of McGill awoke one morning to find their little enclave surrounded by barbed wire and guards. Shortly after they were removed, the homes were set ablaze one night, no effort was made to extinguish the fire. The residents of McGill still refer to the neighborhoods today as Greek Town, and Austrian Town, thankfully nobody controls where you live anymore. The only evidence left today of "Jap Town" is a couple of old telephone poles with wires hanging off them, and a concrete vault for the water line to that section.