#mininghistory

[speedilydeepruins]

A windy but clear morning in Moonta Mines, SA

Recently purchased a Dji mini pro 4 drone. Always wanted one but was a little scared of owning one. So, took myself out this morning to this area knowing that I would be alone. I am absolutely a beginner at drone photography. Then the wind started to blow, warnings on the RC were flashing so had to cut my drone session short unfortunately.

[nolonelyroads]

Abandoned MGL Tungsten Mill, Winnemucca Lake, NV. I spotted this site on google maps and decided to give it a gander. This was the mill that processed tungsten from a nearby mine, mostly in use during WWII when tungsten was needed for steel, armor, and artillery shells. Records show the mine stopped production in 1956. This place was huge and looked like the ruins of an old mountainside fortress. . . . . . . #nevada #abandoned #ruins #mininghistory #DFMI #TravelNevada #nvmag #explorenevada #naturalnevada #nevadaliving #onlyinNV #DiscoverNV #modernoutdoors #natgeolandscape #natgeoadventure #natgeoyourshot  #natgeotravelpic #Yourshotphotographer #negativemag #OurPlanetDaily #lonelyplanet #mylpguide #usinterior #sonyalpha #bealpha @sonyalpha (at Burning Man, Black Rock Desert) https://www.instagram.com/p/CEu4F_ijjgt/?igshid=e6kyd61zq85z

[alidaisinthevalli]

The switchbacks of Black Bear Pass are visible in the cut through the Aspen trees with the hydroelectric plant and Bridal Veil Falls on the right. A notoriously dangerous road descending from an elevation of 12,840 feet, that connects U.S. 550 to Telluride, formerly marked by a sign that read, "Telluride ----> City of gold. 12 miles - 2 hours. You don't have to be crazy to drive this road - but it helps - Jeeps only." After repeated thefts of the sign authorities stopped replacing it.

In 1891, Telluride's L.L. Nunn joined forces with George Westinghouse to build the Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant, an alternating current power plant, near Telluride. (Nunn's home can be found at the corner of Aspen and Columbia Streets; next door is the home he purchased for the "pinheads" to study hydro-electric engineering.) The plant supplied power to the Gold King Mine 3.5 miles away. This was the first successful demonstration of long-distance transmission of industrial-grade alternating current power and used two 100-hp Westinghouse alternators, one working as a generator producing 3000 volt, 133 Hertz, single-phase AC, and the other used as an AC motor. This hydroelectric AC power plant predated the Westinghouse plant at Niagara Falls by 4 years. Nunn and his brother Paul built power plants in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Mexico, and the Ontario Power plant at Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. Nunn developed a keen interest in education as part of his electrical power companies, and in conjunction with Cornell University built the Telluride House at Cornell in 1909 to educate promising students in electrical engineering. Later, Nunn along with Charles Walcott, started the non-profit Telluride Association. Nunn founded Deep Springs College in 1917. All of Nunn's educational endeavors are going strong today. Each year, the Telluride Tech Festival honors Nunn, Tesla, and Westinghouse, along with current day technology and science leaders.

[jeffsullivan]

Scouted Northern Nevada for locations last week, and the weather didn’t disappoint! #charcoalkilns #mininghistory #whitepinecounty #ely #nevada #statepark (at Ely, Nevada) https://www.instagram.com/p/BztlPRAlriy/?igshid=ayqfb1g09ouh

[husheduphistory]

Calumet: A Christmas Tragedy in Copper Country

On Christmas Eve 1913 hundreds of people in Calumet, Michigan were celebrating the holidays in a way they did not think was going to be possible that year. While snow drifted down onto the streets families gathered in a warm room eating food, singing songs, and watching their children’s faces glow when they were given a present. It was the only one many would be receiving that year. The people gathered that night were miners, and although their jobs made every day hard, the previous months had been extremely difficult for a very different reason. It was a happy night filled with the spirit of the holidays and for some it would be their last.

In 1913 the Keeweenaw Peninsula of northwest Michigan was copper country and the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company ("C&H") was the single largest copper mining company in the region. By the summer of 1913 nearly 15,000 men were working in the mines and all of them knew that every day at work had the potential for disaster. The work week consisted of six twelve-hour days which would put only three dollars in their pockets. This was if they were able to survive a day at work where accidents caused an average of one death and more than twelve serious injuries every week. In 1908 a chapter of the Western Federation of Miners formed but it was not until 1913 that the WFM were able to confront the mine owners and threaten to strike if their demands were not met. The requests made to the owners included raises in pay, the end to child labor, moves in safety like the addition of support beams in the mine to prevent cave-ins, and an end to one-man drill operations. The owners refused and on July 23, 1913 the miners went on strike.

Calumet and Hecla Mine shaft No. 2 circa 1906.

A one-man drill operation similar to those being protested by the miners.

The strike was successful in the sense that the mines were forced to shut down without the majority of their labor force but the mine owners were not about to let the incident go unanswered. They called in the National Guard to protect the mines and hired hundreds of strikebreakers to instill fear in those holding strong against the owners. Although the National Guard was recalled due to the miners being nonviolent, the strikebreakers moved ahead with their agenda and killed two strikers in broad daylight.

The owners of the mines were sure that by winter the miners would be forced back into work before facing a Michigan winter with no guaranteed means for their families. Many of the workers left but of those that remained 200 of them and 500 of their children were spending their 1913 Christmas Eve on the second floor of Calumet’s Italian Hall.

Knowing that the months without work left so many of the miners and their families with no way to celebrate the holidays the Calumet Women’s Auxiliary #15 of the Western Federation of Miners decided to throw them a holiday party. Calumet’s Italian Hall had two stories and the party was taking place on the second floor which was only accessible by a single narrow staircase. The party began at 2pm and approximately two hours later it started to get dark and people began to plan their return home, but first it was time for the presents. Calumet Women’s Auxiliary President Annie Clemenc took to the stage and began to distribute candy, mittens, and toys to the grateful miner’s children. It was a happy scene, but it was destroyed in a matter of moments.

Calumet’s Italian Hall

At approximately 4:40pm a man wearing a long dark coat and a hat pulled tightly down to his face entered the room and yelled “FIRE!” before disappearing back down the steps. The reaction was as instant as it was devastating. The hundreds and hundreds of party goers rushed to the only way they knew to get out of the building, the single cramped staircase which became completely packed with bodies within minutes. Volunteer firemen arrived quickly but they could not do anything from street level leaving them with no option but to climb up a rickety fire escape and attempt a rescue from the top. When they arrived at the mass of people they made a horrific discovery. In the attempt to get down the staircase people had been either trampled to death or suffocated from the pressing crush of bodies all stuck in place with nowhere to go. At the end of the ordeal eleven adults and sixty-two children lay dead inside the hall and on the snowy ground outside the building. There was not a single life lost to fire. This is because there never was a fire in the Calumet Italian Hall that night. No one knew the name of the man who entered the building and yelled the word, but numerous reports had one common thread, that he had been wearing a button for the Citizens Alliance, a vicious anti-union and anti-strike organization. He was a strikebreaker.

The grief that filled Calumet and the surrounding region was all encompassing in the days and weeks following the tragedy. On December 28th 1913 a mass funeral took place with services being held at the same time in multiple churches. Mourners filled the streets for the massive funeral procession where the children were carried in small white coffins and adults were pulled by horse-drawn carriages to a cemetery just west of Calumet. Some parents, like Frank and Josepa Klarich, were burying all of their children that day with the deaths of their daughters Kristina (11), Maria (9), and Katarina (7). Others watched as their parent’s caskets were wheeled past them like all seven of the Alla children who lost their father at the hall and their mother only three years earlier.

Wooden caskets being prepared before the funeral.

The funeral procession held on December 28th 1913.

The only thing that seemed to break up the grief was the anger and bitterness directed at the mining company and the Citizen’s Alliance. People demanded an answer, but the results were not clear or comforting. In the days after the tragedy the coroner convened an inquest and took testimony, but many people interviewed were not even at the hall. Of those that were spoken to most were questioned in English and told they needed to answer in English despite not being comfortable with the language. When Western Federation of Miners president Charles Moyer began to send telegrams demanding an investigation he was quickly silenced by thugs who beat him, shot him, and threw him on a train promising that he would die if he returned. In early March 1914, a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives came to Copper Country to investigate the strike and collect testimony about the events that took place in the hall that night. Twenty witnesses testified under oath and of those twenty, eight swore that the man who first raised the cry of "fire" was wearing a Citizen’s Alliance button on his coat. The man was never identified and no one was ever held accountable for the seventy-three Christmas Eve deaths of Calumet, Michigan.

In 1941 singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie immortalized the horrors that became known as the Italian Hall Massacre with his song “1913 Massacre”. In the lyrics Guthrie firmly places the blame for the disaster on the owners of the mines with his lyrics stating:

“Well a little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lights, To play the piano so you gotta keep quiet, To hear all this fun you would not realize, That the copper boss' thug men are milling outside.”

The Italian Hall was demolished in 1984 but the front archway remains as a memorial to those lost on Christmas Eve 1913.

The former archway of the Italian Hall and a state historical marker placed there in 1987.

You can read more about the victims of the tragedy here

You can listen to the song “1913 Massacre” by Woody Guthrie here

[abandoned-mines-az]

Sunflower Mine, Sunflower Mining District, Maricopa County, AZ The Sunflower Mine is an old mercury mine located within the Mazatzal Mountains ⛰️. Discovered in 1911 by E.H. Bowman, the Sunflower Mine was the largest mercury producer within its mining district, hence the district's naming. The mine's most significant production and development occurred during the 1940s and 1950s. From the 1950s to the 1980s, multiple mining entities took leases on the mine, sporadically working and developing the group of claims. Besides some sampling and testing, mining activity began to die down around the late 1980s and into the 1990s. Today, the mine and it's accompanying mill are entirely deserted and ruined. To access the mine and its remains, use a high clearance 4x4 and take Sunflower Mine OHV Trial off Forest Road 201 near Rio Verde. The mine sits upon upatented US Forest Land. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #AZMH #arizona #abandonedandforgotten #AZ_mining_HST #azmineexplorer #arizonaadventures #adventure #abandonedmine #AZMININGHISTORY #abandonedplacesaz #abandoned_junkies #abandoned #abandonedplaces #photography #photoblog #mineexplorer #mineexploring #mineexploration #mininghistory #mill #machinery (at Sunflower, Arizona) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgfBAmcJnmH/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[abandoned-mines-az]

Black Pearl Mine, Maricopa County, AZ Located within the Belmont Mountains, the Black Pearl Mine is a former magnesium mine established in 1966. Found within the mining landscape, are a gate and camp remains, along with a half-filled incline shaft. . . . . . . . . . . . #AZMININGHISTORY #azmineexplorer #adventure #offroadadventure #offroad #deserted #decay #desert #sonorandesert #mininghistory #mineshaft (at Belmont Mountains) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTz5kiXvLPL/?utm_medium=tumblr

[abandoned-mines-az]

Looking down the tunnel of the Colorado Mine, Yuma County, AZ The Colorado group of mines or Lincoln mine group comprises multiple mining claims in the Castle Dome Mountains. While many minerals were mined from these claims, the primary elements mined were lead and silver. Workings include stoping operations from the late 1800s and early 1900s. The fill and dumps were also reworked in the 1940s. The mining group is also known among AZ mineral collectors for its green cubed fluorite, which was also mined and shipped. The tunnel pictured is quite unique in that it punches right through a small hill, with two portals on either side of the hill. The mining area can be accessed by a high clearance vehicle off of Castle Dome Mining Road. . . . . . . . . . . #abandonedplaces #arizona #az #abandonedmine #offroadadventure #desert #mininghistory #explore #silvermine #photooftheday #picoftheday (at Castle Dome Mountains) https://www.instagram.com/p/CN8HXqqgC5k/?igshid=1boao5qe97nz7