When considering our family history, I've noticed we have quite a few miners in the past 150 years. My Mom's father's family mined coal near Lanark, Rutherglen, Scotland. My Dad's grandfathers came here for the purpose of finding their fortunes extracting gold from the mountains.
Regardless of family history, mining is not in my blood. The idea of crawling into a shaft in the ground for any reason makes me crazy. If any of my ancestors made any money mining, they must have buried it somewhere. My Dad gave me some of his reminiscences about his mining days. These are only a few:
Me: Well, what did you think about mining? Did you like it?
Dad: Oh, well, mining is hard, dangerous work actually. Then I worked for Ed Webber up Ten Mile. They had a Ten Mile above Rimini, up there, sampling one summer.
Becky: Bet you had to just stay because it probably was far…
Dad: Oh yeah we stayed there. They furnished us.
Herb Schwabe (sp?) and I were working together up there digging holes down in bedrock and sampling, and they weren’t too deep holes. We dug a number of them. Kept a ledger of what the dirt was like all the way down and a pan to show if there was any colors to speak of, which there weren’t. Most of that stuff had been worked out, you know. We did that for most of this one summer. And then up ‘til…well the first day of hunting season which was the 15th of October, we got a big snow storm. I went hunting that day, it was a Sunday, I think. It snowed all day long. I didn’t see a thing. I got back that night. It snowed about, oh, a foot and a half that day. And the next day, when it quit snowing then, it was so deep, we really couldn’t get out with our truck – with that little ole model A Ford truck. And we walked up over the hill. He had another outfit that was settin’ up a washing machine rig up under the head of Colorado Mountain – up near Chessman reservoir up in there. So we walked up the hill in the snow, through the snow, got into snow clear up to here coming up through there. Walked up there. Then we stayed there a few days. Then the snow melted, and they brought us around in the truck and back up. We got the other truck and came back around and up there. And then we worked with them the rest of the fall until Thanksgiving up there. They got that washing rig set up.
Me: What’s a washing rig?
Dad: Oh, a machine, actually it’s just a glorified mechanical sluice box. They had a drag line, you know, that’s what they call these dirt shovels. It was an old one only they had a real long boom on it. They’d bring this drag line bucket out and they’d take and turn it loose and swing it and it’d drop out and drop down in and then they take and drag it full and it get the bucket full and pick it up and swing it over and dump it into the top of this washing machine into the hopper. And the the water was pumped up through there and would wash it. Then they throw the ole rocks in it. Had sort of a trammel that would run the big rocks out and the fine stuff would take and go down and wash through the washing machine and catch in the riffles below. They run that through. They’d clean up every few days. And in that month they took out about.. Well. they had a quart jar and they had about that much gold in it.
Me: About a half or a third of a quart jar?
Dad: Well, about a third of a quart jar of gold. They figured about $2500 at the old price of gold
Me: Did they figure that was worth it?
Dad: Oh, well, mining is hard, dangerous work actually. Then I worked for Ed Webber up Ten Mile. They had a Ten Mile above Rimini, up there, sampling one summer.
Becky: Bet you had to just stay because it probably was far…
Dad: Oh yeah we stayed there. They furnished us.
Herb Schwabe (sp?) and I were working together up there digging holes down in bedrock and sampling, and they weren’t too deep holes. We dug a number of them. Kept a ledger of what the dirt was like all the way down and a pan to show if there was any colors to speak of, which there weren’t. Most of that stuff had been worked out, you know. We did that for most of this one summer. And then up ‘til…well the first day of hunting season which was the 15th of October, we got a big snow storm. I went hunting that day, it was a Sunday, I think. It snowed all day long. I didn’t see a thing. I got back that night. It snowed about, oh, a foot and a half that day. And the next day, when it quit snowing then, it was so deep, we really couldn’t get out with our truck – with that little ole model A Ford truck. And we walked up over the hill. He had another outfit that was settin’ up a washing machine rig up under the head of Colorado Mountain – up near Chessman reservoir up in there. So we walked up the hill in the snow, through the snow, got into snow clear up to here coming up through there. Walked up there. Then we stayed there a few days. Then the snow melted, and they brought us around in the truck and back up. We got the other truck and came back around and up there. And then we worked with them the rest of the fall until Thanksgiving up there. They got that washing rig set up.
Me: What’s a washing rig?
Dad: Oh, a machine, actually it’s just a glorified mechanical sluice box. They had a drag line, you know, that’s what they call these dirt shovels. It was an old one only they had a real long boom on it. They’d bring this drag line bucket out and they’d take and turn it loose and swing it and it’d drop out and drop down in and then they take and drag it full and it get the bucket full and pick it up and swing it over and dump it into the top of this washing machine into the hopper. And the the water was pumped up through there and would wash it. Then they throw the ole rocks in it. Had sort of a trammel that would run the big rocks out and the fine stuff would take and go down and wash through the washing machine and catch in the riffles below. They run that through. They’d clean up every few days. And in that month they took out about.. Well. they had a quart jar and they had about that much gold in it.
Me: About a half or a third of a quart jar?
Dad: Well, about a third of a quart jar of gold. They figured about $2500 at the old price of gold
Me: Did they figure that was worth it?
Dad: No, it wasn’t.
3 comments:
I don't think it's my blood either!!!
wow! I am so glad you asked him these questions. You did a really great job of just getting hime to talk. I love reading what his life was like.
What an interesting story. Mining has always seemed like dark, fruitless work. I definitely feel that I am more the farmer type. I think Nick is the "hunter" type.
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