47 Lives Lost August 28, 1922
On a hot summer night in 1922, fire and toxic gas ripped through a mine shaft nearly a mile beneath the surface, trapping 47 miners. The incident at the Argonaut Gold Mine in Jackson, about 30 miles from Sutter's Mill in Coloma, turned into a 22-day rescue effort...
The Argonaut mine had been discovered in the 1850s by two freed slaves, William Tudor and James Hager. It was destined to become one of California's richest, producing more than $25 million before the federal government closed the nation's gold mines at the beginning of World War II. (Gold was considered nonessential to the war effort.)...
By the early 1920s, the Argonaut's main shaft extended 4,900 feet into a maze of interconnected caverns and honeycombed tunnels. Most miners, primarily immigrants from Italy, Spain and Serbia, earned $4 a day...
Shortly before midnight on Aug. 27, 1922, when most of Jackson was asleep (or occupied in speak-easies and brothels), a fire broke out below 3,000 feet. Most of the men on the night shift were trapped...
A few miners who were stationed closer to the surface clambered out, alerted others and began pouring water down the shaft. By dawn, the townspeople, firefighters and every miner in Amador County had rushed to help. They could hear water hissing as it hit the flames, raging out of control in the impassable shaft...
It took 2 1/2 days, until Aug. 30, to extinguish the blaze. Two rescue teams began to reopen two passageways that connected the Argonaut with its rival and neighbor, the Kennedy Mine. The tunnels had been closed after a 1919 fire...
After laboring for a week, rescuers had yet to reach the miners. But they, and newspapers, remained optimistic -- if inconsistent. A front-page Times story almost two weeks after the fire had begun screamed: "Rescue Crews Hope to Reach Miners in Week." Yet three days earlier, the paper had quoted engineers and mining officials as saying they believed that there was no hope and that 47 coffins had been ordered...
In the depths of Prohibition, the American Red Cross dispensed a couple of shots of whiskey to each rescuer before he entered the tunnel, and a few more when he climbed out...
The liquor was supplied by the federal government as a special "dispensation" and to help bolster morale...
On the evening of Sept. 18, rescuers wearing masks and carrying oxygen tanks inserted a caged canary behind a bulkhead. Several minutes later, the small bird lay lifeless; rescuers lost all hope of finding survivors...
Moving on, the crew watched as rats scurried away from where the remains of two men would be found huddled together. They would be identified as Charles and Arthur O'Berg, father and son. All but one of the other bodies were found nearby...
Devastated townsfolk buried the victims four days later in three cemeteries -- Protestant, Catholic and Greek Orthodox. Forty-seven coffins were placed in the ground, even though the body of the last man would not be found for a year...
It turned out that all of the doomed miners had fled farther into the mine to escape the fire. Trapped nearly a mile from the main entrance, they built two bulkheads and barricaded themselves, trying to stave off deadly carbon monoxide...
The above are portions of an LA Times article, you can read the remainder here-
47 Lives Lost August 28, 1922
On a hot summer night in 1922, fire and toxic gas ripped through a mine shaft nearly a mile beneath the surface, trapping 47 miners. The incident at the Argonaut Gold Mine in Jackson, about 30 miles from Sutter's Mill in Coloma, turned into a 22-day rescue effort...
The Argonaut mine had been discovered in the 1850s by two freed slaves, William Tudor and James Hager. It was destined to become one of California's richest, producing more than $25 million before the federal government closed the nation's gold mines at the beginning of World War II. (Gold was considered nonessential to the war effort.)...
By the early 1920s, the Argonaut's main shaft extended 4,900 feet into a maze of interconnected caverns and honeycombed tunnels. Most miners, primarily immigrants from Italy, Spain and Serbia, earned $4 a day...
Shortly before midnight on Aug. 27, 1922, when most of Jackson was asleep (or occupied in speak-easies and brothels), a fire broke out below 3,000 feet. Most of the men on the night shift were trapped...
A few miners who were stationed closer to the surface clambered out, alerted others and began pouring water down the shaft. By dawn, the townspeople, firefighters and every miner in Amador County had rushed to help. They could hear water hissing as it hit the flames, raging out of control in the impassable shaft...
It took 2 1/2 days, until Aug. 30, to extinguish the blaze. Two rescue teams began to reopen two passageways that connected the Argonaut with its rival and neighbor, the Kennedy Mine. The tunnels had been closed after a 1919 fire...
After laboring for a week, rescuers had yet to reach the miners. But they, and newspapers, remained optimistic -- if inconsistent. A front-page Times story almost two weeks after the fire had begun screamed: "Rescue Crews Hope to Reach Miners in Week." Yet three days earlier, the paper had quoted engineers and mining officials as saying they believed that there was no hope and that 47 coffins had been ordered...
In the depths of Prohibition, the American Red Cross dispensed a couple of shots of whiskey to each rescuer before he entered the tunnel, and a few more when he climbed out...
The liquor was supplied by the federal government as a special "dispensation" and to help bolster morale...
On the evening of Sept. 18, rescuers wearing masks and carrying oxygen tanks inserted a caged canary behind a bulkhead. Several minutes later, the small bird lay lifeless; rescuers lost all hope of finding survivors...
Moving on, the crew watched as rats scurried away from where the remains of two men would be found huddled together. They would be identified as Charles and Arthur O'Berg, father and son. All but one of the other bodies were found nearby...
Devastated townsfolk buried the victims four days later in three cemeteries -- Protestant, Catholic and Greek Orthodox. Forty-seven coffins were placed in the ground, even though the body of the last man would not be found for a year...
It turned out that all of the doomed miners had fled farther into the mine to escape the fire. Trapped nearly a mile from the main entrance, they built two bulkheads and barricaded themselves, trying to stave off deadly carbon monoxide...
The above are portions of an LA Times article, you can read the remainder here-