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On Thursday, the recently restored remains of the Blue Bird Mine complex -- including a bunkhouse dating back to at least 1877 and a stone caretaker's house that was built when mining resumed after the Great Depression -- will be officially opened to the public at a 2 p.m. ceremony at Boulder County's Caribou Ranch open space.
The description at the Powder House. You can see how the Powder House fit into the larger mining operations on the hillside.
In 1861 a fire destroyed most of the town. A newspaper article about the fire stated that there were around 40 stamp mills in the vicinity of Nevada, a staggering number for that early date, which surely made the town the milling center of Colorado at that time.
Water system of town of Nevadaville - barrel holds 13 gallons sold 2 barrels for 25 cents
Details of Nevadaville's history are difficult to find as it was always overshadowed by nearby Central City, which was Colorado's most important city for two decades. The 1861 fire was one of the most notable events here, and the stories on it reveal at least some detail on the town's early history.
GHH mining machine underground shovel, when they were introduced in the Monteponi mine, helped to make the work lighter and faster. He wouldn't mind seeing it displayed in a protected area and not exposed to the elements. A machine created to work indoors that ends its "career" outdoors. The most interesting part are the reinforcements made by hand welding along the entire profile of the blade of the shovel. Although not a certainly functional artistic work; this is proof of the mastery and skills that the staff had acquired in working in a mine like this.
Pala da sottosuolo GHH mining machine, quando vennero introdotte nella miniera di Monteponi aiutarono a rendere il lavoro più leggero e veloce. Non sabbe male vederla esposta in una zona protetta e non esposta alle intemperie. Una macchina che nasce per lavorare al chiuso che finisce al sua "carriera" all'aria aperta. La parte più interessante sono i rinforzi realizzati con saldatura a mano lungo tutto il profilo della lama della pala. Seppure non un lavoro artistico sicuramente funzionale; questo a riprova della maestria e delle competenze che il personale aveva acquisito nel lavorare in una miniera come questa.
The Mining Tanker is built to go into in low underground tunnels to provide refueling needs for mining equipment.
This model was built for both the Lego Space Discord's Febroverary build challenge, as well as the Old Gray Bricks Discord's Color My Bricks contest.
Moonta Mines and the Hughes Enginehouse.
After the May 1861 race between Hughes’ man William Horn and Patrick Ryan and his associates to register the Moonta mining lease a lengthy legal process began for the validation of Walter Watson Hughes’ mining rights to the site. Although the legal battle was not settled until 1864 Hughes acted quickly and formed the Tipara Mineral Association, later the Moonta Mining association, with himself, Edward Stirling, John Taylor, Robert Barr Smith, (Sir)Thomas Elder, G Waterhouse and G. Hall. Hundreds of Cornish miners were attracted to the town directly from Cornwall although some came from Kapunda. The government resumed some parts of Hughes’ pastoral lease to lay out the towns of Kadina and the port of Wallaroo. Moonta was surveyed and town blocks sold in April 1863. As they sold quickly most Moonta settlers lived in cottages and shanties on the mining leasehold lands in settlements such as Hamley Flat, Moonta Mines, Yelta, Cross Roads etc. By 1870 the population of Moonta reached 10,000 people with 6,000 on the mining lease lands. Coal was shipped in to the Moonta mines from Newcastle as it was needed to fire the boiler houses and the water pumps for the mine. The copper lodes were up to 700 metres below the surface although most worked lodes were less than 300 metres below the surface and the main lodes were named Elder’s lode, Elder West lode, Beddomes lode, Greens lode and Fergusson lode. Each lode had one or more deep shafts with the main ones being Washington’s shaft, Stirling’s shaft, Taylor’s shaft and Hughes’ shaft etc. There were a number of enginehouses across Moonta mines Hughes’s, Richman’s and Elder’s. Hughes enginehouse had Smith’s (Robert Barr Smith), Hughes, Elders, Duncan and Bennetts shafts nearby. Next to the enginehouse was the boilerhouse which created steam for the enginehouse which pumped water out of the deep shafts. Nearby was a winching house to winch items and miners down the shafts but mainly to bring ore to the surface. Nearby were the settling tanks for water pumped from the shafts, the concentration plant and the crushing plant. These processes and structures were needed near most mine shafts. Also near Hughes enginehouse were the stables and the workshops for the repair and in some cases manufacture of equipment etc. 300 men and boys were employed in Hughes workshops alone.
The Hughes’ engine house serviced Smith’s, Waterhouse’s and Elder’s shafts and others and it was primarily responsible to pumping water out of mine shafts. Hughe’s 60 inch Cornish beam pumping engine was installed in a fine stone building in 1865 and it operated continuously without any major break down from then until the mine closure in 1923. It required constant works to keep fire up to the boilers. It could pump water from a depth of 700 metres (2,500 feet) with four strokes of the pump a minute. Near this main shaft were workshops, the mine offices, the manager’s residence (Captain Hancock) etc. In other areas of the mine works were the brick kiln, the assay office, the powder magazine, processing plants and several major areas for the tailings debris bought to the surface from the mine shafts. The Hughes enginehouse was built of limestone and still remains but without the pump. Near it are the ruins of Elder’s enginehouse and the Hughes water pool or reservoir. Captain Hancock managed the Hughes’ mines from 1864 to 1898. Under his management the mine grew quickly with 1,200 men and boys employed as early as 1865.
Across the main road are the remains of Richman’s enginehouse, Richman’s Tailings Heap which can be climbed, the compressor house and the crushing plant etc. Richman’s enginehouse which was built from 1867 to 1869 was mainly used to power the crushing and dressing machinery of Taylor’s Shaft the deepest shaft on the Moonta fields. Taylor’s shaft which descended 2,520 feet beneath the surface had its water pumped out by the Hughes enginehouse from some distance away. The ruins of the crushing and concentrating plants beside Taylor’s shaft are quite impressive. Some of the ruins of the crusher house erected in 1869 in local stone remain beside Richman’s enginehouse. All mining required explosives, mainly gun powder and later dynamite and the ruins of the Moonta Mines explosives magazine still exist near the old Moonta Mines School.
In 1890 the Wallaroo and Moonta Mines amalgamated. The combined companies employed on average around 1,900 people a year in the mines and smelters. The peak year for employment was 1906 when the company hired 2,700 men. This followed a disastrous fire in 1904 when the large Taylor Shaft and poppet was destroyed by fire. There were three main shafts operating at the Wallaroo Mines by 1906, the Boors, Hughes and Office shafts. Between 1860 and 1923 when the mine finally closed down the Wallaroo Mine alone produced almost £10,000 million worth of copper and the combined mine with Moonta produced over £20,000 million worth of copper. After the closure of the mine buildings were stripped of anything saleable and most were demolished. As the population dwindled the cottages on the mining lease land were generally demolished but a few still remain. At Moonta Mines a few non-mining buildings remain the government school (1877-1968) now the National Trust Museum, Moonta Mines Methodist Church (1865) with a seating capacity of 1,250 parishioners and a typical miner’s cottage (1870) now a National Trust museum. At East Moonta there is a former Methodist Church built in 1872.
Sir Walter Watson Hughes.
Walter Watson Hughes was born in 1803 in Scotland in Pittenweem near St Andrews in Fife. In his early teens he went to sea and eventually bought his own ship the brig Hero in Calcutta in 1829 when he was 26 years old. He then traded in Asia including the opium trade from Calcutta to China. He established close bonds with his group of sailors on the Hero. He settled in Adelaide in 1841 and married Sophia Richmond later that year and assisted his crew from the Hero to return to England, gather their families and emigrate to SA. Whilst working for a mercantile company he began sheep farming in the Adelaide Hills and amassed some money and a flock of sheep. The workers on his Macclesfield property were all the former sailors of the Hero. In 1843 he also took out a leasehold run of 16 square miles near Wilmington with a flock of 6,000 sheep. In 1846 he took out leasehold lands by the Hummock Ranges and across to the Broughton Plains. In April 1846 he acquired a new leasehold at Hoyleton along the edge of the Clare Hills called The Peak west of Skillogalee Creek. In 1851 he also took out a small mining lease on Yorke Peninsula as he had been running sheep there with his brother-in-law John Duncan. In 1857 he took over the Wallaroo run there from Robert Miller adjoining the Point Riley run held by Edward Stirling. He then organised a great trek of his flock, his workers and their families from Macclesfield to Wallaroo. He instructed his shepherds to look for minerals. Wallaroo was managed by John Duncan as Hughes mainly resided at The Peak. One shepherd John Boor discovered copper at Wallaroo in 1860. Hughes took out mining leases but others soon rushed to the area and also took out mining leases, especially in the area that became Kadina. Hughes became the largest shareholder in his Wallaroo Mining Company which was originally known as Wandilta Mines. In June 1860 the first ship load of copper ore was taken to Port Adelaide at a cost of 8 shillings a ton. By comparison transport of ore from Burra cost 50 shillings per ton at that time. The Wallaroo ores were 20 to 30 % pure copper but some ore were up to 50% pure copper. Bricks and mining equipment was unloaded at Wallaroo for Hughes in September 1860 and over 20 men were working his mines. In August 1860 Hughes visited Burra to entice Cornish miners to Wallaroo. By November 1860 the mine was being worked in conjunction with Elders Stirling and Company (Thomas Elder, Robert Barr Smith, John Taylor and Edward Stirling). Hughes’ early start was not popular with other mining lease holders. Then to further sully Walter Watson Hughes’s reputation another shepherd Patrick Ryan in May 1861 found copper on Hughes leasehold run at what was to become Moonta. This was the mine that produced great wealth and saved and made the fortunes of Hughes and Elder Smith and Co as many believed the Wallaroo mine alone would have bankrupted them all.
Ryan tried to register his mining claim but was too drunk to remember where it was. Hughes then used skulduggery and cunning and registered four mining leases on the next day after Ryan had tried to register one. Some of Ryan’s partners were ready to register the claim the next day but they were “pipped at the post”. When Hughes heard of Ryan’s unsuccessful claim he sent one of his men on horseback overnight to get to the Surveyor General’s Office first before Ryan’s partners. Hughes also had Ryan sign an agreement with him. Hughes also registered a further 26 buffer zone mining rights as well. Some later claimed Hughes had no moral or legal right to these Moonta mining rights but after years of court appeals and legal fighting the Privy Council in England ruled in favour of Hughes. During the legal fight Hughes returned to live in England from 1864 to 1870.
The establishment of the Moonta Mine was life changing for all the five major investors. It was the first mine to return a profit of one million pounds. Once it was operational Hughes bought Torrens Park House, built a grand mansion to replace his simple stone cottage on Hughes Park at Watervale, sailed back to England for a few years, took up leased lands near Lake Eyre and acquired large freehold estates at Watervale and Gum Creek. In Wallaroo he built the first copper smelter in 1861 followed by other furnaces as the Moonta mines grew. Mining operations at Moonta were complex and some shafts exceeded 700 metres in depth. This created problems with water (and heat for the miners) so large pump houses were required such as the Hughes Engine House which still stands, albeit in ruins. The Moonta mine lasted for over sixty years. The Copper Triangle became the largest population centre outside of Adelaide by the 1870s. In the first year of operations the Moonta Mine produced over £100,000 profit. But it had another sixty years of operations after that!
Was Walter Watson Hughes the father of 19th century Aboriginal leader John Sansbury? Walter Watson Hughes worked on leaseholds on Yorke Peninsula from the mid-1840s. He also took out leasehold runs in 1851 at Hoyleton and then Wallaroo in 1857. He never built a substantial homestead on his Wallaroo run which was run by his brother-in-law John Duncan as he lived at The Peak. According to Narrunga oral genealogy John Sansbury who was born in 1854 to “King Tommy” and “Queen Mary” leader of all the clans on Yorke Peninsula was actually the biological son of Walter Watson Hughes. This was never acknowledged by Hughes or ever reported in the white press. When John Sansbury married in a church in 1874 he only listed his father as King Tommy. Presumably this church was at Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission which was established in 1868. A group of nondenominational missionaries led by the Moravians had started mission work with the Aborigines near the copper mines of Moonta in 1867. But Walter Watson Hughes gave a pension for life to King Tommy supposedly as compensation for his lands and King Tommy’s help in the discovery of copper. Or was it a pension to assist in the upbringing of his biological son? We will never know the full truth of this but photographs of John Sansbury in the 1870s certainly show a remarkable resemblance to Walter Watson Hughes. The Hughes name was also taken up by other Narrung people which was very common in the 19th century when Aboriginal people adopted the name of any white person that they worked for. We do know that Walter Watson Hughes and his wife Sophia never had any children of their own. Consequently when he died Hughes left his South Australian freehold lands – Hughes Park at Watervale and Gum Creek station near Booborowie and parts of his fortune to his nephew in South Australia – Sir John Duncan the son of Hughes’ sister who was married to John Duncan. Sir Walter Watson Hughes was buried near his London home in Chertsey, Surrey as was his wife Sophia who died in 1885. Hughes died on New Year’s Day 1887. He was knighted in 1880 for his services and philanthropy to South Australia. Apart from the University he was a substantial donor to the Presbyterian Church which was in Flinders Street. His memorial window in that church donated by his nephew John Duncan was moved to Scots Church North Terrace after the Flinders Street Church was sold to the YMCA in 1956. In 1860 he also donated copper ore specimens to the Gawler museum. When Walter Watson Hughes and Sophia Hughes returned to England in 1874 they both had their portraits painted in London by Miss Margaret Thomas.
Hearst Memorial Mining building at UCB.
Olympus 9-18 @ 9mm, f/8. Several exposures merged with hugin+enfuse.
Grenfell. The roaming of the local Aboriginal people became curtailed from 1833 when the first white pastoralist moved into the Grenfell district. He was John Wood squatting beyond the legal areas. It was one of Wood’s shepherds who discovered gold in 1866. He was named Cornelius O’Brien and he registered the find in Young and took out a miners lease. O’Brien went on to sell his lease in 1872 for £32,000 and his mine yielded £370,000 worth of gold over the first five years. Diggers rushed to the area in 1866, many from Lambing Flat fields (Young), when news was released and a settlement named Emu Creek sprang up overnight. On 1st January 1867 the goldfields were renamed Grenfell in honour of John Grenfell the Gold Commissioner of nearby Forbes who was killed by bushrangers in a hold up on 6th December 1866. Before then the Weddin Post Office opened at Emu Creek on 3rd December 1866 and it was changed to Grenfell PO on December 24th. The Weddin Ranges lie just to the west of Grenfell and the shire council is still the Weddin Shire. Thus the first part of Grenfell developed along the curves of Emu Creek as the fields soon had around 20,000 diggers. Buildings - hotels, dance hall and theatres, mainly canvas or wooden in the early years, crowded along the narrow George Street which was the original heart of the town. There were soon 33 licensed hotels in Grenfell. But several major fires destroyed many of the cramped buildings. Today George Street is just a narrow backstreet and the Main Street is the area of commerce, but still with a dogleg curve. The goldfield at Grenfell was a rich one but it provided its bounty for only a short time. Between 1867 and 1869 Grenfell produced over 40,000 ounces (1,100 kilograms) of gold worth over three million pounds. A few buildings of note remain in George Street despite their faded appearance and they include the Oddfellows Hall. The first one was built in 1873 and was replaced with the current building in 1888. Next to it is the old printer’s works. The Mining Record was published from 1866 (marked on the building) but became the Grenfell Record in 1875 when the new owner moved the premises to the Main Street next to the Exchange Hotel.
Among the early gold miners to rush the fields was a Norwegian digger Niels Larsen. On 17th June 1867 Larsen’s wife gave birth in their tent to a baby who they named Henry changing their surname to Lawson at the same time. WE do not know but Lawson built a slab hut so Henry could have been born in that. His mother Louisa made meals and sold them to the diggers for income. Niels Lawson soon moved his family to Mudgee and that is where Henry Lawson spent most of his childhood. For some years young Henry travelled the country out west doing sheep farming work with his father which gave him later inspiration for his outback stories. In 1883 Henry Lawson went to live in Sydney with his mother. Louisa established a suffragette paper for women called Dawn. She had her own printing press and Henry Lawson’s first short stories and prose were printed by his mother. His mother, with Peter Bell, printed the radical journal called the Republican. By this time she had separated from Henry’s father. Henry accepted a newspaper job in Brisbane in 1891. His first story in the Bulletin was published in 1888. By the mid-1890s Henry had taken up drinking. Despite travel and writing and several bouts of depression he persisted with life. After his wife Bertha separated from him in 1920 he took up drinking again and attempted suicide after which he entered a deep depression and downhill slide psychologically. He died alone in 1922. Although Henry Lawson did not spent much of his life in Grenfell the site where the slab hut was built the site was recorded and dedicated in 1924 with Lawson’s wife and daughter attending the ceremony after Henry Lawson’s death. A tree was planted at the site at that time. Grenfell was early in its recognition of Lawson’s contribution to Australian literature and folklore. The town also established the Henry Lawson Festival, which is still held annually, in 1957 when few towns were thinking about attracting tourists to their regions or honouring their prominent citizens. The festival covers music, singing, poetry photography, writing, theatre etc. Lawson is commemorated on our ten dollar note.
Another literary figure with connections to Grenfell was Anthony Trollope, the famous English novelist and social critic and commentator. Trollope is best known for his series of novels called the Chronicles of Barsetshire (Barchester Towers) and 47 novels in all and several travel books. His social commentaries covered Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and North America. Trollope visited Grenfell twice in 1871 to visit his son Frederick who worked on a sheep station near Grenfell. He then travelled parts of QLD and NSW before visiting New Zealand. In total he spent 13 months in Australia and from it he wrote several books on Australia which were serialised in Australian newspapers. Fred Trollope’s ancestors still live in Australia and they have inherited the baronetcy of Casewick Hall from Anthony Trollope and it is currently held by Sir Anthony Trollope a school teacher in Sydney. Trollope accused Melbournians of being loud mouth braggarts but in Adelaide he stayed with Sir Thomas Elder at Birksgate and was dined at the Adelaide Club. Trollope’s acclaimed quotation on Adelaide was: “No city in Australia gives one more fixedly the idea that Australian colonization has been a success, than does the city of Adelaide”. His humour and irony were also evident in his quotes: “The number of sheep at these stations will generally indicate with fair accuracy the mode of life at the head station. A hundred thousand sheep and upwards require a professed man-cook and a butler to look after them; forty thousand sheep cannot be shorn without a piano; twenty thousand is the lowest number that renders napkins at dinner imperative.” And “Australian mosquitoes, of which I had heard much and which I feared greatly, were never so venomous to me as mosquitoes have been in other countries.” Or “The subject of heat is one of extreme delicacy… One does not allude to the heat in a host's house any more than to a bad bottle of wine or an ill-cooked joint of meat… You may call an inn hot, or a court-house, but not a gentleman's paddock or a lady's drawing-room.”
Although not a grand town Grenfell has charm and history. Big changes came to the town when wheat was first grown in the surrounding countryside from 1871 onwards but transport costs were a problem. A spur railway lime from Cowra reached Grenfell in 1901 and agriculture expanded. A flourmill was erected in the 1880s but when it burnt within a few years. It was replaced with the Challenge flourmill in 1901. That mill still stands although not in use. It produced flour only for our troops during the World War Two and it finally closed in the 1960s. The heritage buildings of Grenfell include the Courthouse (1879), the School of Arts (1890) and Wesleyan Church (1888) in Camp Street and the Anglican Church (1877) and Presbyterian Church (1870) in Middle Street etc.
Will I can figured one thing out - this had a belt for movement of material and
Georgetown was a hot mining area and silver also.
The Drenner E-51, while highly outdated now, pioneered the now-common "isolation" method of mining, in which the surrounding rock is vaporized using low-intensity bolts and the material is gathered via tractor beam and sent to the aft processing unit.
This craft must be used in tandem with a shipping barge, as it has no internal holds of its own.
Imaging courtesy Drenner ITC.
Old mining equipment scattered across the ground, Bannack ghost town, Bannack State Park, Montana.
The ghost town was established in the 1860s, and rose and fell with nearby mining success. The town was even inhabited as recently as the 1970s before being abandoned, and then preserved as a state park.
Olympus E-M10, Olympus 9-18mm lens.
Three generations of Terex mining trucks.
From left to right:
- Terex 33-19 Titan. A truck built only once in 1973 with a then record-breaking payload of 350 tons (318 tonnes).
- Terex 33-11C. Produced between 1981 and 1986, the 85 ton (77 tonne) hauler was one of the popular machines in the Terex mining truck range.
- Terex Unit Rig MT 6300AC. Introduced in 2008, the 400 ton (363 tonne) truck is nowadays part of Caterpillar's range of diesel-electric mining trucks as the 798 AC.
Mining is a global industry that underpins industrial development in many regions. It is a key sector not only because it is the source of essential raw materials, but also because it potentially leads to economic and social development, often in remote and poorly developed areas, due to its importance in national accounts, level of employment and influence of international markets, etc. Mining activities can also cause severe environmental degradation because of its location (almost all conceivable places, often with insufficient infrastructure), size and timescale. Potential negative impacts of mining operations include: * Energy and water consumption * Air, water and land pollution * Landscape alteration * Soil erosion * Destruction of river banks * Health & safety nuisance.
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This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Lawrence Hislop
I re-discovered this old rock-crusher engine the other day. I keep photographing it because its radiator is made of a, well, radiator! This engine is located near the old Whit-Roy mine.
An old wagon outside the Ravenglass railway museum which long before it was a tourist steam railway was used for transporting iron ore and stone along the Eskdale valley.
The Mining Tanker is built to go into in low underground tunnels to provide refueling needs for mining equipment.
This model was built for both the Lego Space Discord's Febroverary build challenge, as well as the Old Gray Bricks Discord's Color My Bricks contest.
Taken years ago in an abandonded mining area. This is the passage in which carts (correction here?) were travelling over.
I used my first ever DSLR, Sony A200 + 18-70
Exact Mining Services Kenworth K104 B/Double sits in the yard just prior to getting a much needed wash.
The Mining Tanker is built to go into in low underground tunnels to provide refueling needs for mining equipment.
This model was built for both the Lego Space Discord's Febroverary build challenge, as well as the Old Gray Bricks Discord's Color My Bricks contest.
Theoretically you can drive here, but many vehicles would get blocked, stuck or dinged up on large rocks, even with 4WD & clearance.
This is a composite image created to celebrate the mining industry that was once prevalent in the community in which I now live.
Mining Equipment in Hamilton, Nevada Photographed with a G Yashica GSN Electro 35
35mm Rangefinder Using Kodak Portra 400 Film.
This link will take you to my photo set for my G Yashica GSN Electro 35:
Had to get creative to maKe out the letters on the end but it says - MFD BY UNIVERSAL CRUSHER.CO
Yule Marble is a marble of metamorphosed limestone found only in the Yule Creek Valley, in the West Elk Mountains of Colorado, 2.8 miles (4.5 km) southeast of the town of Marble, Colorado.[1] First discovered in 1873, it is quarried today inside a mountain at 9,300 feet (2,800 m) above sea level, in contrast to most marble, which is quarried from an open pit and at much lower elevations.