A short history of what's important

Ghost Town Tuesday! - Silver City, Utah

2011-12-06T19:18:00.000-08:00

I started this post on tuesday, so that title is somewhat correct. If this sort of thing is a problem for you, then I'm betting you aren't the super-popular type. I've got 99 problems, and people who have a hard time figuring out poorly-titled posts aren't one. Neither is tetanus (I got my booster!)

You know what I like most about ghost towns? It's not the history or the inspiring stories or any of that crap. It's that no matter how badly you are doing in life, the ghost town is most certainly doing worse. I mean, they're all dead and I'm still here! I may not have a job or a girlfriend, but at least I'm not a moldering corpse! Sometimes it's fun to walk to the center of town and dare someone to judge you. They can't! They wore crazy pantaloons and bonnets! Also there's no one there. This paragraph reflects very poorly on me.

Silver City is as desolate as any ghost town you will ever see. Time, weather, misapproapriation of funds, lack of effective city planning/population have all taken their toll on the moldering remains. Nowadays all that awaits you is a field. This field, in fact....

Also sheep. Lots of sheep. Here's a fun fact about sheep dogs. They are a really mean. Like 8th grade english teacher mean. Maybe YOU aren't applying yourself Mrs Stevenson! Bah.

The rise and fall of Silver City mirrors the rise and fall of the Tintic Mining District (in which it is located). Let's take a closer look at our trusty map so we have some idea of where we are. Remember, by trusty I mean that I'm going to draw it using my memory.

That's a good start. If I had bothered to make a map for the post on Diamond, you would see that the two towns were neighbors at one time. They probably had deragatory names for each other! Towns do that sometimes. Anyway, here's a close-up....

There. Now we have some bearings. Or we are just as lost as ever. Either way let's get on with this. Much like the ghost town of Diamond, Silver City was founded as the result of several rich mines being identified in 1869. The Grand-daddy mine of them all (not quite, but it was a pretty nifty find) was the Sunbeam, discovered by a fella named George Rust. Here he is now!

What's that, Mr. Rust? You have something to say?

Legend has it that the Sunbeam claim was identified when Mr. Rust saw the sunlight shining off an outcrop of ore. The story seems to be missing a few pieces as to what happened next, but apparently a group of mormon cowboys filed the claim (where Mr. Rust went, I couldn't say) and were promptly booted from the mormon church as mining was somewhat frowned upon in early Utah. Here's where the Sunbeam Mine is located....

It's pretty close to town, which is convient considering that the bus system was probably pretty bad. Here's the Sunbeam Mine nowadays!

Not much to look at. That was reclaimed in 2010, so now it looks like even less. Dust to dust and all that I suppose. Shortly after the Sunbeam Mine was staked, several other promising mines were staked in and around Silver City. These include the Swansea....

The South Swansea....

The Four Aces and Picnic Mines...

All of which were also located very convenently near town....

And so, here we are. We have miners, we have mines, we have ticks, and we have people who were willing to bleed them all dry. These are the ingredients a person needs for a town. And sure enough, in 1870 the town of Silver City was officially born.

Like all good towns, it started out being little more than tents and mud, but this wasn't to be the case for long. The mines were booming, and as a result the miners were ready for some prostitutes and whiskey, both of which require a somewhat more perminant building (not really, but I suppose it's preferred). As one observer put it....

"A billiard saloon, balcksmith shop, grog hole, some tents, several drunks, a free fight, water some miles off, a hold down 90 feet hunting a spring without success, and any number of rich or imaginary rich lodes in the neighborhood. The owners are all poor and poor men work for them. By next spring the poor with be poorer."

That doesn't sound so great I guess. But it doesn't matter. That observer was wrong and as such he doesn't even get his named mentioned in this post (also I don't know it). Silver City soon was the early center of the Tintic District, with the Mammoth claims to the north, and Diamond to the south. The name "Silver City" came from the rich silver mines that were basically in the middle of town. Silver City is a cool name. By 1883, the Salt Lake and Western and Tintic Range railroads had been extended into Silver City, and the mines were free to really take off.

As these things typically go, things didn't last very long. At a depth of 250 feet, the rich silver bodies that had everyone willing to live in that sheep-infested valley pinched-out into thick beds of worthless pyrite. One by one the mines closed down and the miners moved to the recent strikes at Alta and Park City. Silver City didn't disappear, but I bet land values were very affordable at that point. Gangs of wild sheep controlled the streets, and nobody went out at night for fear of being "sheared" clean by ill-tempered sheep crime-lords.

That could have been the end of our story if it wasn't for one brave soul who was determined to stick it out. He dug and dug into the pyrite and in July of 1896 he was rewarded! At a depth of 350 feet, a silver-rich galena body was found! Galena is valuable! Silver is valuable! The sheep were temporarialy shooed away, and Silver City exploded (figuratively). By 1899 the population was at 800 people, and all the mines were advanced into the rich ore bodies below the devilish pyrite that had at one time tormented them so. This is considered the golden-age of silver city.

It is a worthwhile exercise at this juncture to step back and make a mental list of the things miners hate. Step into the body of a turn of the century miner (mind the syphallis!) and take a look around. As a miner, you probably find that you dislike corrupt mine bosses, poor safety records, and other miners. You also hate watered-down whiskey and the chinese (you're a tad bit racist). But what about the very substance of life? I speak of water. Now, water is great in managabile quantities. Hell, it's not only great, it necessary. But what if it gets out of hand?

That is a flooded mine. Water floods mines. Miners can't breathe in water. This is a problem. Groundwater near the mines in the vicinity of Silver City showed up at a depths ranging from 300 to 650 feet below the current ground level. No matter how rich a mine is, it means nothing if you can't get at the ore. The mines that weren't dripping with valuable minerals had to close, as they couldn't afford to battle the constant flow of water that took over the mines. The major mines initiated an expensive pumping system and continued to plunge into the earth to find more of the good stuff. Look at how much digging the Swansea Mine did!

But, alas, even they weren't immune to the ravages of water and water-related troubles. Eventually the water over-powered their pumps and the mine had to close. The town began to shrink again. Then in 1902 the whole place burned to the ground. That shrunk it up real fast.

The town was somewhat rebuilt a third time, although it was no longer particularly important (like the postmaster general). It limped on, probably filling up with the less social folks (get off my land!) and sheep. But Silver City was to get one more chance to make it to the big leagues.

Allow me to introduce Jesse Knight.

Mr. Knight is a monumental figure in the Utah Mining world and was at one point owned most of the Tintic District, but I'm not going to get into that here. Or anywhere in this post. And probably never at all. All you need to know is that if he asked you to eat a pinecone, you ate as many as you could as fast as you could. Unless you had some self-respect.

Mr. Knight had a problem. Smelter rates were too high, and it made it hard to make a profit off all the ore his mines were producing. So he did what rich people do and decided to simply build his own smelter (and then charge himself much more reasonable rates I imagine). In 1907 he selected a nice flat spot outside of the decaying remains of Silver City and built the Utah Ore Sampling Company Smelter. Need proof? Here you go!

With the nearby smelter hard at work, Silver City boomed once again, reaching a population of 1500 in 1908. Buildings were constructed as fast as the lumber could get there, with most of hte population being employed in one of Jesse Knights many ventures in the area. The smelter was such a success that it got its own holiday. On July 24th, 1908, the good people celebrated "Smelter Day", complete with free food, free transport to the event, and even a marrage. It was probably the only time you will ever see a mine smelter at the center of a positive event, but those were different times. But what did they care? Things were good again! And they were going to last this time! Right?

Nope. Shipping rates dropped, and suddenly it became more economical to just ship your ore to Salt Lake City than it was to ship it to your smelters in the mountains and let the hill people deal with it. So Mr. Knight took down his fantastic, wonder-astic smelter and moved it to Salt Lake City one year later (October of 1909). Now instead of producing silver and copper, the smelter produces a large amount of concrete debris.

And so, we (again) reach a rather gloomy part of our post. You see, without mines or any sort of mine-related income, the town of Silver City once again found itself without purpose. But, like a rich elderly relative, it refused to die. Silver City lingered around, feeding on whatever scraps the town of Eureka didn't want. The remaining inhabitants didn't care much for outsiders. Or foreigners. Two Croat smelter workers who had decided to hang around the smelter closed were involved in a killing, which resulted in the following statement from a Silver City resident -

"Before the smelter was completed a boat load of Turkish people (Greeks) was imported for cheap labor which of course caused contention among the working people, these Turks were housed in large rooming and boarding houses near the smelter and much of them selves. and a good thing because these people were considered very dangerous and most of them carried long knives in the wide sash around their waist and we kids were admonished to stay away from that part of town or we would be butchered and eaten."

There were no reports of cannablism, so I guess the two parties stayed away from each other. Life puttered on through the 1920's with the population holding steady at 650 folks. Look! Here's the graduating class of 1927!

By 1930, the population had dropped to 278 people, and by 1933 the town was deserted and left to the elements (who showed no mercy). Various fires encouraged the wooden structures to move towards the white light, and the ever present sheep romped about like they owned the place. That leads us to this.....

(That is the old waste-water pond from the smelter. The people of Silver City used to love to swim in it. It probably wouldn't have been as popular if they had known that lead and arsenic also loved to swim in it. But who knows? All the swimmers are dead, so we can't ask them).

A few crumbling concrete foundations, a few rusty tools, and lots of sheep. Seriously, the sheep are endless out here. And so we end our visit to Silver City. Because it's boring out there nowadays and I'm sick of talking about it.

Aurichalcite - It falls apart and is really frustrating and I hate it.

2011-12-01T23:35:00.000-08:00

Well, we've covered quite a few basic minerals and opened our eyes to the possibilities that abound in the world of geology. I think we are ready for the some of the meatier secondary minerals that no one cares about. And so, without any further introduction, here is today's mineral.

Now, a lot of people will try to tell you that in order to learn about something, you need to learn a lot of fancy facts about that something. That's mostly true. Well, alright, that's all the way true. But what about if we have a bunch of opinions about that thing as well? Are opinions any less important than facts? Technically yes. But I'm going to tell you my opinions about aurichalcite anyway.

Aurichalcite is a huge pain in the butt. Here's why;

OPINION/FACT 1 - It never shows up in a convinent place.

OPINION/FACT 2 - It falls apart faster than grandma's bones.

I would have preferred that picture say “aurichalcite” instead of “dreams”, but when you’re stealing stuff off the internet you can’t be choosey. Plus maybe it’s our dream to find aurichalcite, then it totally works. Things that fall apart easily are the worst. Once in elementary school I made this really cool hat for "make a cool hat and wear it to school" day. Man, that hat had everything. A pocket for band-aids, two or three safety pins, a little blinking light at the top, everything a man could want in a hat. Anyway, it fell apart right before I got to school and I was totally the laughing stock of the class. Or would have been if I had been popular enough to warrent some level of attention. Sometimes flying under the radar is the best way to survivie kids!

OPINION/FACT #3 - Aurichalcite is haunted.

Nope, made that one up.

OPINION/FACT #4 – Now here's the kicker. Aurichalcite is really awesome. There really isn’t a photo to go with this one.

Now, again, those things are just my opinions. So you can see that I’m pretty torn on the issue. The title of this post clearly states that I hate aurichalcite, yet OPINION/FACT #4 states quite ot opposite. The only thing worse than having conflicting opinions about a mineral is having an opinion about a mineral in the first place.

Anyway, let's move on. For you hard-core “I want to actually learn something” types (nerds), let’s get into the nitty-gritty. But first let’s look at this cool bottle I found!

I don’t know what’s in it, but I’m guessing that it’s about 120 years old! It could be whiskey! Or some sort of whiskey-based medical juice! Anyway, if you are going to be a geologist, you need to keep your eyes out for other neat artifacts when in the field. With any luck you too could find an old bottle filled with some toxic liquid.

Let’s take a look at some other pieces of aurichalcite.

The first thing that jumps out at us is that, it looks like fuzzy blue stuff. When a mineral forms as a bunch of fuzzy little needles like that, it’s known as having a acicular habit. Neat! If you are anything like me, then your first thought would be that it was formed thusly…

Sadly, no. Muppets play little to no part in the formation of aurichalcite. Yet. In order to make aurichalcite, you need five atoms of zinc…

Another five atoms of copper…

And a gob of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.

Bake them together and you get (Zn, Cu)5 (CO3)2 (OH)6 , or in otherwords…this…

FUN FACT FOR YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES!

Aurichalcite is an example of a "Pearly" luster folks! Have we talked about luster before? Seems like we have. Go read all the other posts and tell me if I've never talked about luster. DO IT!

END OF FUN FACT!

Remember azurite and malachite? They also feature the CO3 and OH guys. As a result these minerals are all included in the same family of minerals known as carbonates. Pour a little hydrochloric acid on these buggers and stand back! Actually you don’t have to. They just fizz a little. Neat to watch though. Remember to ask your parents before you mess around with the family hydrochloric acid reserves.

Now before you run off with your picks and shovels to find some of this admittedly cool looking mineral, remember my second opinion of aurichalcite. It is incredibly hard to keep in one piece. This is due to a whopping hardness of 1.5. This pretty much means that a stern look will cause it to blow up.

Not only that, but aurichalcite has a “brittle” tenacity. This means pretty much what you think it does. Tenacity is a measure of a mineral’s ability to deform under some sort of impact. Minerals that are brittle don’t deform much. They just turn to dust. Like a mummy playing catcher for a major-league baseball team.

So we start to get a picture of why collecting the stuff is a challenge. You have to break off a big piece of rock and just hope that some of it survives. And it never does.

So other than the sheer thrill of hunting geology’s most structurally inept mineral, why would anyone want the stuff? Well, like anything that contains copper, it can be used as an ore of….copper. It clocks in at 14.5% copper, which means that if you had 100 pounds of it, you could make 14.5 pounds of pure-copper pennies. That’s as scientific as I’m going to get. Also that may be wrong. I’m not doing a lot of fact-checking here. Anyway, that’s not all that great. But where does the zinc content come in at?? Wait for it…

44.8 Percent! That’s pretty good. So it’s an even better ore of zinc, which we apparently mostly use for making little piles of white powder.

A final aspect to consider while pondering the uses of aurichalcite is by realizing that it is a secondary mineral. Have I ever described what that means? I think I have, but I don’t even know what day it is, so who can tell. Anyway, when an ore body is forming, the initial minerals to show up are usually known as the primary minerals. These tend to be somewhat simple chemically (but also sometimes not). Later groundwater shows up and messes with the primary minerals (using such processes as oxidation, which involves a bunch of fancy words to describe). This messing-with results in the creation of the secondary minerals, which usually are a little more colorful from a chemical aspect. SO WHY SHOULD WE CARE??? Well, if you are a miner and you find a bunch of secondary minerals, it stands to reason that there will be a bunch of primary minerals still hanging out somewhere, and those usually have valuable stuff in them. If you are anyone else, you probably shouldn’t care at all.

Let’s delve into history a little bit now. After all, this blog has the word history right in the title. Seems like I’m obligated. Aurichalcite was first described back in the good old year of 1839 by some fellow named Bottger. No one seems to remember his first name though. Geology can be cruel as well as kind. Anyway, this Bottger fellow gave the blue-green mineral the name aurichalcite (“mountain copper”), which was close to the name that ancient Greeks gave to brass. Brass is made out of zinc and copper. Aurichalcite is made out of zinc and copper. You should be able figure out the rest.

They’re both made out of zinc and copper. There. I helped out the slower of our viewers.

So, there, we have a little background. Aurichalcite is a copper-zinc carbonate mineral that is incredible fragile and looks like blown up muppet. Where can you find some of this stuff for yourselves? Well, if you feel like getting really frustrated and are in Utah (or nearby), look for it here…

Those dots are probably a little off, but they are within 50 miles or so. Probably. Also that map is really small, so this is probably going to be inconvinent to the hard of seeing. If you can make out the numbers, they are…

1. Lucin District

2. Gold Hill District

3. Big Cottonwood District

4. Park City District

5. Ophir District

6. Tintic District

7. Lincoln District

8. Bradshaw District

9. Dixie Apex, uh, mine.

There are likely a billion other places. So when I said it was rare what I meant to say was that it is pretty common. In Utah anyway. I don’t know how Kansas is looking.

And so, there we are. We know what it is, how it forms, where we can find it, and how I feel about it. That’s more than Wikipedia will give you. They think they’re so great! Just because they don’t have to make up stuff doesn’t mean that they are better than me!

A Return to What's Important

2011-11-21T23:29:00.000-08:00

Well, here we are. I've been unemployed for three days now. Did this blog have something to do with my being laid off? Probably. It certainly didn't help. But now the damage is done and we can get back on with covering items of importance. I feared that not having the internet would hinder my use of this internet-based interface, but you would be surprised what a person with nothing but free time can figure out. It turns out phones have technology in them. Technology that makes it so internet can happen even when I'm not at work.

And so, let us return to the world of blogging. At least for the time being. At some point I need to fill out these unemployment papers.

An end to what's important

2011-11-16T10:31:00.000-08:00

Well friends, I'm afraid I'm going away for a while. You see, I've only got internet access at work, and due to....lingering differences in the company's direction....I am not longer going to have a portal with which to share my magical tales of chemical formulas and mostly made-up ghost stories.

And so, for the time being, I wish you all the best. One day I will find a new job and return to delighting your souls and tickling your loins with tales of whatever this blog was about.

- Scott

HALLOWEEN!!!

2011-10-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

Look at it! You can practically smell the ghosts! I don't have time to go through all the steps that it would take you to draw that with the same precision that I have have, but feel free to give it a go anyway. Perhaps you can improve on it (doubtfully). Also, I don't know what that thing to the left of the pumpkin is. Some sort of haunted bike pump maybe. All we can know for sure is that it is haunted and it is totally in your mind now.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Also, Geology and stuff.

Spooky Stories That Aren't Actually All That Scary!!

2011-10-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

Being out in the wilderness by yourself is scary. Not like "Oh no! An alien is popping out of my gizzards and my insurance just lapsed!" scary, but more like "If my tire popped, I would be coyote a buffet in an hour" scary. It's a different type of scary. Alien parasitic attacks are a sudden, shocking event, but coyote buffets are a constant concern, ceaselessly peeking in at you from the corners of your sub-conscience. That's what being outdoors by yourself is like. Sure it's entertaining, but there's something there in your head reminding you that humans invented the concept of indoors because most outdoor accidents happen....well, outdoors.

So why are we covering the concept of what basically amounts to paranoia? I'll tell you why. It's because when you are outdoors you are typically more aware of your surroundings than when you are lounging on the couch covered in string cheese wrappers. I think this means that you are more likely to think you've seen a ghost (or felt a ghostly presence) when you are outdoors by yourself. Maybe that's not what you think it means. Perhaps you no longer have any idea what I'm rambling on about. Let's move on.

My ghost story takes place here.

That is the Centennial Eureka Mine. Well, it was. Now it's a big pile of boards and metal and some bushes. But maybe......ALSO GHOSTS???!!!! Or possibly just more bushes. We'll see.

Now, I have wonderful plans to cover this mine in depth (I know, you can't wait!), but for now let's just get a little background. The Centennial Eureka is located in the Tintic Mining District, which in turn is reached by following the wolf's cry for 5 nights, traveling only on foot. Or you can just take Highway 6. Either way will get you there. Actually that first one won't get you there. I don't know where that will get you. Possibly near some wolves.

The Centennial Eureka began doing mining things way back in the good ol' year 1876. Now, that was a long time ago. People born in that year would be 135 years old. People who are 135 years old look gross. Like raisins. Or so I would imagine.

But enough of this people who look like food madness! What about ghosts? Well, we aren't to the ghosts yet. Soon.....

Over its lifetime, the mine produced more money than any other mine in the district. Rich jewels worthy of divas and royalty were used as paper weights! Gold leaf was used as toilet paper! And regular toilet paper was used by dogs! And dog toilet paper wasn't used at all. Ahhhh, how would it be to be that rich?

Now, it didn't always used to look like this...

At one point, it used to look like this....

Look at all that! All of that is gone now. All that remains is the head frame (look at the last picture dude). In that picture, our friendly little head frame is located inside that tall building near the center of the picture. All of the other buildings do other things, like making timber supports and housing gnome eradication crews. Here's the thing; mines don't get to be that big unless things are really going well. And things were booming for the Centennial Eureka until that fateful day when things went wrong.

The crews arriving for work on September 17, 1914 were planning to work in the Oklahoma Stope, a big cavern that formed when the miners were working an ore body. Now here's the problem; the rock around the ore was shattered and crumbly. The miners had recognized this danger and double the number of timbers to stabilize the roof. It wasn't enough, however, and without any warning the roof of the cavern collapsed. Thirteen men were trapped in the cave-in, and only two survived to meet the rescue party. One miner felt the sudden increase in pressure from the collapsing roof and dove down a nearby tunnel. The other survivor was lucky enough to get buried in timbers that shielded him from the much less pleasant rock debris. The bodies of the remaining miners were found in the exact areas where they had been working.

Details are sketchy concerning how many bodies were found (or if all of them had been found). I know that several are now located in the Eureka Cemetery, which is where most dead people tend to end up. Mining continued in the mine for several years after that, but as we have learned from watching reality ghost-hunting TV shows, anywhere people die there is likely to be a good ol' fashioned ghost problem.

Now, I feel like I should point out that I've never seen a ghost at the Centennial Eureka mine. I've never seen a shovel mysteriously fly up and start....shoveling. I've never even heard a cheery tune being whistled from the void. In fact, it is a great place to go hunt all sorts of green and blue rocks. But I have always felt uneasy there. This is where I must redirect you to the first paragraph of this post. Remember how I said that I always feel uneasy when I'm outdoors? I brought that up so you could consider for yourself whether or not my uneasiness is caused by some sort of anxiety problem or if it is caused by something more ghostly. Or possibly by this owl who lives in the mine nowadays.

That owl is a jerk, by the way. Let's get a close-up.

But allow me to get scary here for a moment. While it is true that I tend to be nervous whenever I'm outdoors (owls are spooky), the Centennial Eureka feels off for a different reason. It almost feels claustrophobic, even though you are very much outdoors and in the middle of nothing. Also, it's not uncommon to get goosebumps even on the warmest day. Is it possible that the spirits of the crushed miners still occupy the site?

Are they still mining away, not knowing that their shift ended nearly a century ago? Or am I freaking myself out whenever I go there? You will have to visit the site yourself to see, but I don't think that it is outside the realm of possibility that a few miner's spirits still can be found at the site. Also an easily pissed-off owl.

Mines, and the Ghosts that love them. Part III

2011-10-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

Today's ghost is a fairly rare creature. If fact, I've never seen one. But I've seen a lot of movies, and that's even better than real-life experience.

GHOSTS GHOST TUESDAY!!!! - HiaWAtHA, Utah

2011-10-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

Usually this first paragraph is reserved for my prattling on about something or another in order to try to set the mood of the post. But in this case I'm just going to post this.....

I think that creates the mood I'm going for. For you see, the ghost town of Hiawatha isn't completely abandoned after all. There are a few residents left.......THE GHOSTS!!!

Also the polygamists. But the ghosts are the ones to worry about.

The tale of Hiawatha is much like the other towns we have already looked at. Mining was discovered, mining occurred, mining died out, mines become homes to bears, bears are scary. But what is different about Hiawatha is what the brave miners were looking for. Instead of shiny golds, proud silvers, and inept copper, the goal here was coal. Lots of coal. Here it is now...

Coal is good. Well, not if you are the environment. But it's good for humans. We use it to make all sorts of things happen. Without coal, you wouldn't be able to see old fashioned trains work. We probably use it for other things, but I'm not here to educate you about coal. I'm not here to do anything other than burn away the work hours. You should already know this.

The story of Hiawatha begins with the story of Carbon County (Utah, duh). Carbon County Utah produces a huge amount of coal. If fact, let's take a gander at the name "Carbon County". Carbon is coal! Well, sort of. Mostly. Sometimes there's other stuff in there, but it's mostly carbon. That is the reason that Carbon County isn't named....something other than Carbon County. Commercial quantities of coal are easy to find 'round those parts, that's what I'm saying. Carbon County is here....

The coal reserves of Carbon County have been known since the early settlers moved into the place. It sticks out of the ground here and there, and sometimes you can find old leaf impressions in the coal! That's pretty cool. Or should I say...that's pretty COAL!!! HAHAHAHAhahaaaa! I've stolen a few seconds of your life. Anyway, if you're going to be a huge coal producing community, it stands to reason that you would have a huge coal miner statue. And lo, it was so....

Hiawatha was a town established in the foothills of Gentry Mountain. In 1909, some grizzled ol' prospector was poking around an abandoned ranch and found a nice big bunch of coal that we could dig out of the hill and do various things with. Coal was a hot commodity back in the day, so it didn't take long for the mine to really take off.

I put that picture in there just to make sure you were still awake. By 1911, the town had tricked nearly 500 people into believing that it was a good place to live. What's more, like two amoebas locked in eternal battle, the town of Hiawatha took over another nearby village named Blackhawk and consumed it in 1915.

The whole operation was owned by the United States Fuel Company. I took a cool picture of the company sign, still located on what used to be the main office building. Here it is!

I should point out that I went to Hiawatha at night, so that actually is a picture of the company sign. Nature hates when we take pictures of it at night. So here's a picture of the sign I found on the internet.

Look how confident that monarch is! He knows you will buy his coal. What choice do you have? Anyway, that picture should let you know that the town is still largely intact. Many of the buildings are still there, and a few folks still call the place home.

The town swelled to nearly 1,500 brave souls by the early 1940's, and the mine was really pumping out the black chunky goodness that is coal. The company built a good number of concrete apartment houses, a church, a school, stores, bathhouse and other such things.

Here's a couple of the gents now, standing next to one of those coal-less automobiles.

The town started to putter out in the 1950's when coal prices dropped. By 1960 the population was down to 440, and by 1990 a mere 43 people called it home. Once a town drops below 50 people, nobody really counts anymore. When I was out there I would place the population at about, oh, 12. And several cats. Dozens of cats. An unnerving number of cats.

Now, let's get to the halloween part of this madness. As we've seen, I was out there at night. Night is when the ghosts are out and about, and I was looking for ghosts. My first stop was the old company warehouse and store.

Here it is in Spookovision!

What is that mysterious black spot hovering above the building??? A ghost? A wraith? A skeleton pirate? Nope, just the moon. This building was supposed to be home to at least 5 different wandering souls (according to this kid who was wearing a robe and wandering nearby) who showed up the night before and were scary and stuff. He also told me that taking pictures in negative form would show me more ghosts (so I did that a lot). Would we be as lucky/unlucky to see a ghost? The presence of this highly animated skeleton puppet seems to be a good sign...

Here's the thing. The building is very much the way it was back when it was filled coal-motivated folks. Work benches were still in place, oil stains still occupied the floor, and the door was still a huge novelty clown face.

Upon entering, you encounter this delightful little critter.

It popped out of this equally delightful box.

While both those things are terrifying, both objects are not likely ghosts. Boxes rarely leave behind ghosts, regardless of how terrifyingly they left this world. This is the only picture I took that had any sort of....unexplained mysteryness.

See it? What the devil is that???? I actually don't know. But let's look at some of my earlier posts. It almost seems to match the Charlie Brown Type of ghost...

Spooky. As geologists, we must always keep our minds open to the possibility of ghosts. I'm not sure why though. Either way, let's get out of there. That place be haunted.

Our next stop was one of the old boarding houses a litter further to the west (behind the washing machine)...

(here's another picture in spookyovision)

The most striking feature of this probably haunted house (other than the clothes washer), is the presence of an abandoned minivan in the front yard. Or is it abandoned?

Nope. There's a kitty cat in the back seat. Ah well. Moving along, we find ourselves outside the old mine bath house.

Those baskets would hold all the old miner's toiletry items. In fact, most of them still hold the miner's old toiletry items. But here's the thing about hanging a bunch of metal baskets from the ceiling. It's really really scary looking. Take a picture of it in the negative, and look out, you've got a haunted (not really) house on your hands.

Enough of the bath house. Let's get on with the main attraction. The main boarding house.

Again, it was nighttime. But if you expand that picture you can actually see the place! I say you go ahead and do it! There are quite a few stories about this place, so I'm going to add another picture. Here we go...

One story tells that they used to bring orphans in to work in the mines (this would obviously be before child labor laws), and that several died while under the employment of the company. When an orphan dies, you better believe that something's going to be haunted because of it. There have been several reported sightings of a little girl ghost running around in this place, particularly looking out the upper windows...

and standing on the main stairway...

I didn't see any ghost. Should we switch to ghost cam? !

Nothing. Well, a couple of weird black streaks. I don't think they are ghosts though. But who knows? Maybe this place is haunted by a bunch of snake ghosts. So many questions, so little interest in answering them. Let's poke around a little more...

If you like debris, then this place is for you. No ghosts though. Or at least none that my high-tech ghost cam could pick up (phone camera).

Well, nothing more to report. The place is probably haunted, but what isn't nowadays? Ghosts are everywhere. They are in your cereal, in your toilets, in your laundry, everywhere. Are there ghosts watching you right now???? Probably not. You're not that interesting.

Mines, and the Ghosts that love them. Part II

2011-10-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

Today's ghost isn't a ghost that is restricted to mines. It shows up at nursing homes, hospitals, X-treme sporting events, etc. But it does appear at the mines when things start to get collapse-y.

Mines, and the Ghosts that love them. Part I

2011-10-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

Here we are, deep within the bowels of Halloween season. In honor of the season, I thought it might be fun to dabble in the world of the supernatural.

Mines aren't all fun and games. Like all the works of man, they are hot, dangerous places that feature several ways to kill you quickly, and even more ways to kill you rather slowly. It's like Junior High. It's even worse with ye olde mines, the kind that have been long abandoned and are filled with nails waiting to plug themselves into your fleshy human foot. If you find an old, abandoned mine that featured a fire or collapse that ended the career of several folks, then you are pretty much guaranteed a mean case of haunting fever.

Now, if you read up on the subject (which I have sorta done) you will find that different ghosts are created from different events. It's like how different minerals form with according to how much pressure and temperature they are exposed to (just to connect this thing back to geology). And as I said earlier, mines have several ways to kill you. Thus it makes sense that there would be several different types of ghosts haunting the mines around your city. This post, and the others that will follow are going to take a look at your standard mine ghosts.

Ghost #1

Enargite. The New Male Enhancement

2011-09-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

Haha! Just kidding. Today's mineral won't "enlongen your manhood". In fact, if it does ANYTHING to your manhood you are probably holding it wrong. Geology isn't here to help you out in the bedroom. Pervert.

No, today's mineral is much like every other mineral out there. It sits there on your desk, and whenever you look at it it seems to say "Hey, why not go on dates instead of climbing around rock piles to collect more rocks that you'll stick in your garage and never look at again?" Rocks can be very observant. The answer is that rocks can't reject you. No, no matter how many night-farts you make, they'll never say they are too busy to go out with you. Anyway, let's move on.

Today's mineral is Enargite.

The enargite is that shiny grey stuff in that rock I'm holding. The white stuff is quartz. Go ahead and ignore that. Also ignore the lint-roller and half-eaten box of donuts in the background. They have very little to do with enargite. Well, unless your enargite is covered with lint. Let's take a closer look.

Nope, no lint. While we are on the topic, let's discuss rock collection-maintenance. Rocks are dusty. No matter how much you wash them, they will always seem to be covered in dust. And the more rocks you have, the more likely that everything else you own will become covered in dust as well. This includes your action figures, comic books, self-help books, even your ticket stub to the 2008 Comic Con. Yes, rocks will turn all your shrines to social inadequacy into dusty piles. Just like all the hopes and dreams you once had. This paragraph is bringing me down.

Anyway, a good way to keep the dust down is to keep all your rocks in the garage. In addition to keeping the dust down, it will help delay the process of people finding out that you are a weirdo who collects rocks. This paragraph is also bringing me down. Let's find some happy things to focus on. Here's a picture of enargite next to a bag of off-brand Cookie Crisp cereal.

And here it is next to some diabetes.

Sing it, enargite!

And here is a picture of a neat little spider carving I bought at a gas station once.

So what do those pictures tell us? Let's go create a LIST OF FACTS THAT WE KNOW (LOFTWK)

1. Enargite hates to pay for brand-name cereals
2. Enargite has a "metallic" luster. Remember what that means? That refers to that fresh, classy chrome look that fresh enargite has going on.
3. Enargite had a hit jazz record in the early 80's.
4. Rocks carved to look like other things are pretty cool.

There we go. That's a good start. Well, actually that's a horrible start. Those pictures don't tell us anything at all (except for fact #2). We'll have to turn to a book to figure out some real facts.

Behold! The big green book of dryly-delivered mineral facts!

This book may sound boring, but it looks great on a bookshelf. Well, it does when it's on there with a bunch of Bernstein Bears books. I should update my library collection.

So what does this book tell us? Well, it says here that enargite has a pathetic hardness of 3. That's pretty soft, nearly to the point where you could scratch it with your fingernails. With all that metallic luster you would expect it to be harder, but it isn't to be. Geology is full of disappointments. But before you lose all patience with our disappointingly soft mineral friend, watch as it brings these plants back to life!

BEHOLD! OUR MINERAL GRANTS ETERNAL LIFE TO UGLY BROWN PLANTS!!! Nah, I just watered them. But wouldn't that be cool?

Alright, so what's next? Let's look into what makes enargite. The answer may shock and amaze you.

Probably not though.

Enargite is made up of three atoms of our old friend copper...

Mixed with four atoms of our even older friend sulfur...

And a single atom of, well, arsenic.

For a final chemical formula of Cu3AsS4. Or as I like to think of it, (Pennies)3(Deadly)(Stinky)4. Remember how I once said that minerals with sulfur in them are known as Sulfates? Well, this one isn't. It's known as a sulfosalt. Want to know why? Yeah, me too.

FASCINATING LAST DAY OF SUMMER FACT ABOUT ENARGITE

Enargite has one perfect cleavage!

I found that picture while I was googling "Amazed", so stop thinking that I spend my days at work googling "cleavage". And besides, that's not the type of cleavage I was talking about. In geology, cleavage refers to how it breaks when you smash it (more or less). In enargite's case, it would smash in such a way that only one perfectly flat face would form. That's why it looks all shiny in the light! In fact, that's how it got its name! "Enargite" means "distinct" in Latin, which refers to the distinct cleavage. It's a handy way to tell the difference between two minerals that otherwise look exactly alike. Which most of them do. Yes, cleavage is an amazing thing.

END OF FASCINATING LAST DAY OF SUMMER FACT ABOUT ENARGITE

So, where were we? Ah yes, enargite. So why are we wasting our time even talking about this busty mineral? Well, I'll tell you. We can mine it! Not only can we, we do! Or did, I don't know if we do any more. If you can find enough of this stuff to mine (which is hard to do as it's somewhat uncommon), you can pull off the stinky and deadly parts of it and end up with pure copper, which you can then sell to your local copper interest.

Remember that chemical formula we looked at above? Well, that results in a mineral that is 48.3% copper! That's not great, but it will do. I don't know what you are going to do with the 19.1% arsenic or 32.6 percent sulfur. Maybe become that person who lives out on the edge of town and shoots at people who wander onto their property. They always seem to have lots of pretty unusual things on their land. You're going to need to grow a beard though. This includes the women.

SLIGHTLY LESS INTERESTING PART

So we can mine it for copper. As internet geologists, we don't care much about wealth. If we did we would put more efforts into our jobs. No, we are interested in knowing the origins of the very building blocks of our planet. Also, we appear to be interested in Chocodiles. Those things are so good. Anyway, based on our never-ending thirst for knowledge, it may interest you to know that enargite turns into all sorts of other things once oxygen gets involved. Yes-sir-ree, things get down-right funky.

Enargite isn't particularly stable. It's not going to blow up and tear your hands off, but it isn't really happy with itself. And so, it should come as no surprise that it will take any opportunity it can get to turn into something else. For example, say this thing happened....

(That's enargite. I hope you realized that. What if it met up with some water?)

You end up with this!

A fuzzy green mineral! Our weak, bosomy enargite became a bustling community of green stuff! That green stuff is named Olivenite. I'm not going to go into the chemistry behind it all. Knowledge may be power, but it's also really boring.

But behold! The magic doesn't stop there! Olivenite isn't long for this world either! Look at this table! LOOK AT THIS TABLE!!!

As you can see, all sorts of rocky spawn are created by the unearthly mating of olivenite and water! In addition to all them pretty minerals, arsenic and sulfur get released into the air and water and eventually into your liver! Ahhhh, geology.

And so, there we are. Enargite. Maybe not the most fascinating of minerals, but probably one of the minerals you would want to wash your hands after touching. If this blog post just isn't scratching your itch for enargite, you can always go find some for yourself at the Tintic mining district in Utah, or perhaps the Butte mining district in Montana. I'm not driving though.

Ghost Town Tuesday - Diamond, Utah

2011-08-30T12:49:00.000-07:00

Just to be clear, I like ghost towns. Even if they don't have anything left, it's fun to go to these places to try as hard as you can to imagine what life must have been like. "Look! There's Pierre the Pervert, hiding behind the bath house!" or "I hear Ted the mule tanner is having a sale on excess mule chunks!" or "Oh no! my digestive system is chock full of undesirable creatures!" All these things happened. Probably.

Today's ghost town is one of the older places in Utah, and is also has a somewhat cooler name than most. I speak of the town of Diamond.

Sadly, unlike a real diamond, the town Diamond came and went pretty quickly. Probably the best part of having a town with a cool name is the possibilities it opens for high school mascots. Everything sounds cool with "diamond" sitting in front of it. For example, this is the Aye-Aye.

Even when it is young, it looks like sun-baked pig corpse wrapped in leather rope. It scurries around in the middle of the night because it is far too hard to sneak up on something in the daytime when you look like a lost mardi gras float. And it doesn't even do all that well at night! The name Aye-Aye comes from the noise that the native folks of Madagascar used to make when they saw it. I'm not sure about this, but I think it means "Creature from the devil's crotch". In short, no self-respecting high school would want to use the Aye-Aye as a mascot. But what if you were in Diamond?

Bam! Diamond Aye-Ayes. I would die to defend such a creature. But we've gotten off-track. Let's get down to the nitty-gritty.

In the year 1869 (which is a long time ago), the land around Diamond looked....probably exactly like it does now. Ticks were the top of the food chain, followed by rattlesnakes, coyotes, ticks again, and then probably some sort of plant. Let's take another look at what I'm talking about...

A land so bleak that angels weep upon visiting. And what do we use ugly land for? Cows! We use it for cows! And this sets the backdrop for the beginnings of Diamond.

Steve Moore wasn't a rich man. He wasn't even an important man. In fact, once we are done within this intro you won't be hearing from him again. But for this paragraph and a little bit of the next one he's very important. Cows (in addition to being tasty) like to wander. This is a pain for people who raise cows because you don't get paid for cows that you no longer own, and so it is in your interests to keep track of all the cows you can. Steve Moore was busy doing that very thing one dusty day in September of 1869. He followed the clues (mounds of cow turds) up a small canyon on the western foothills of the Tintic Mountains. It's this area....

I don't know how helpful that map is going to be. If you were to visit that canyon, this is what you would see.

Those mines weren't there back in 1869, so ignore them. Anyway, I don't know if Mr. Moore ever found his cows, but he did find something of else. Diamonds! Precious diamonds! Treasure of the Gods! Littering the ground! Cows are good, but diamonds are way better. Mr. Moore ran down the canyon with pockets filled with diamonds and showed them to his buddies. They hooted and whistled and threw their hats in the air (probably, I wasn't there), and they named their canyon "Diamond Canyon" because originality wasn't a prospector's strongest suit. Anyway, turns out the diamonds were just worthless quartz, but you don't throw away a catchy name just because it's a horrible lie.

The story could end right there and we would have very little left to talk about, but something else was discovered while everyone was busy filling their pockets with disappointment. Copper, silver and gold were discovered as well! Veins of galena and pyrite were found on the surface, both shoved full of valuable earth goods!! Silver, gold and copper are also better than cows. Cows are actually pretty far down on the list of valuable things, clocking in at number 476, right after a bucket of broken hot wheels and right above the wail of an ill-tempered toddler.

Anyway, after the whole diamond debacle, this was a bit of welcome news. This discovery lead to the creation of the Tintic Mining District. By 1870, the hills around Diamond Canyon were filled with this guy....

And wherever that guy goes, towns are soon to follow. First come crude, little miners cabins made from logs, weeds, poor-hygiene and mud. If a town is lucky enough to endure beyond this first stage, stone buildings will start to emerge. The next step is a mono-rail. Diamond never quite made it to the mono-rail stage, but spent most of its time in stage two. The town was named Diamond because even back then the miners knew a cool name when they saw it. The mines around the site were so rich that even the hobos wore tuxedos, and monocle-manufacture was up nearly 8000% within one year of the town's creation (this part I'm making up). The main mines around town included the Joe Bowers...

The Showers and Walker

As an interesting (not all that interesting) sidenote, the Showers Mine had only inclined headframe (those big wooden structures that allow people to get up and down in mines) in the west. Why did they do this? Why should you care? I haven't the foggiest. But still kinda neat to look at.

That photo was taken in 1982. Since then, the headframe has become even more inclined. Some would say that it has become dangerously inclined.

And finally, the Shoebridge Bonanza

The ore from these mines was so rich that it was shipped all the way to Wales because there wasn't anyone in the US who could deal with it. And they still made a profit! Precious, precious profits. And wherever there is a profit, there needs to be a place to spend it. Within one year of the discovery of the not-diamonds, a town boasting 4 stores, 3 hotels, 5 saloons, a post office, and an unfortunately-named newspaper named "The Rocky Mountain Husbandman". This newspaper allowed the wealthy newcomers a chance to read up on the latest badger-related fatalities, then turn the page and read an article concerning the latest improvements in top-hat repair. Old timesy rich people were funnier than nowaday rich people.

By 1871, the town had a population of nearly 900 people, which is pretty impressive considering most people couldn't expect to see their 40th birthday. At first, town was located on the canyon bottom but soon it spread up onto the nearby hills closer to the mines. Very few pictures of the place exist, as no one really thought to take pictures of towns back then.

That mountain in the back is the same mountain as this picture. Or at least I think it is. Who can tell.

So that gives you a little perspective of what is left. Which is to say, nothing at all. That same year a large mill was constructed within the city limits to help process the ores coming out of their mines. Like a drunken uncle at opera, it was considered to be a fairly crude operation and didn't last long.

The town was a rough place (as mining camps tended to be), and it was once said of the place; "Diamond is the chief camp of the Tintic Mining District, and is one of the quietest mining camps in Utah. It has been several days now since a murder has been committed". I'm assuming that comment was meant to be hilarious, and it probably was back in 1880. Some things don't age well though.

But as we've seen several times, towns that are tied to mining rarely need to come up with long-term civic planning. By 1890, the mines around town faced the unconquerable foe of water. At a depth of 300 feet, water was pouring into the mines faster than the primitive steam pumps could keep it out. One by one the mines called it quits, despite the fact that good ore still remained. With the mines all flooded, the miners soon started to migrate north to the richer mines (that didn't require gills to work) by Eureka and Mammoth. They took most of their houses with them.

From 1890 to 1900, the town was somewhat maintained by the fact that you could dig anywhere and find ore, but you could only mine it to a depth of 300 feet before things got particularly moist. By 1900 the population of Diamond was down to a brave 264 people and only three businesses. Then, sadly, in 1923 the last house was removed from the townsite and shipped off to a new life in Mammoth. This was a poor choice on the house's part, as Mammoth would join Utah's list of ghost towns a few years later. Well kinda. A few people still live there. But they all seem to have really mean-looking dogs and don't care for us outsiders.

As has been true with most ghost towns we've looked at, the only remaining signs of one-time township are the mine dumps and the graveyards. The mine dumps we've seen, but where is the graveyard? I'll tell you how to find it. Just walk around until you find a place where you feel really creeped out. Then you'll know you've found it. Now, I'm no ghostologist, but the place gave me the heebie-jeebies.

That's the main gate. So you can pretty much tell the place is haunted from the start. It's nice to get the uncertainty out of the way early. The gravestones have all long ago been lost, but a few replacements are still found between the bushes....

(This tribute to our mother's name
Her loving children raise
Yet feel that neither words nor fame
Can tell our love and praise)

Sometimes the gravestones didn't get replaced in time so we no longer know who's down there. In that case, they get a simple yet elegant rock.

The graveyard was full of rocks. One of them belongs to this fellow...

That mean-looking fellow is Henry Green, and he died in August of 1887 and joined the other lonely souls in the Diamond graveyard. I added that picture because that's the only picture I can find of anything having to do with Diamond. So enjoy it.

The Diamond graveyard is actually supposed to be somewhat haunted. The townsite would be too if there were anything left. I couldn't even find a hole in the ground or an old tin can. So if you go out there, prepare to be disappointed and haunted. Probably by this guy.

Ghost Mine Monday - Confidence Mine, Big Cottonwood District

2011-08-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are again. Another week, another blog post. What should we cover this week? A mine? Is that all you people can think about? I have so much more to offer! Fine, we'll look at a mine so you crybabies will get off my back. But that means you won't get to read about the time I tried to make crepes. I guess that's ok because that story would only make us feel bad.

Writing about mines is tricky. Some people don't like posts about mines. It doesn't have cats saying "I can haz" or stuff like that, nor does it have *ahem* blue content. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what it has. Huh. I've kinda run out of steam. Well, nothing to do but power forward! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you....

Yesssirree, we are about to embark on another journey into the cold clutches of lady earth. And our portal to earthly delights is named the Confidence Mine. Oh, look, here we are!

Friendly little place, isn't it? Going into mines can take some getting used to, and probably shouldn't ever be done anyway. But before we dive right in, we need a few facts. Facts are like little hammers we can use to bash in the nails of ignorance while we create the ship of enlightenment! Or something like that. I'm tired.

The first item we need to know is where the mine is. Well, that one is easy enough. It's in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Still confused? Let's look at the map!

The Big Cottonwood Mining District is located within beautiful Big Cottonwood Canyon. It's a feisty little geologic feature located not too far from downtown Salt Lake City, and is full of all sorts of wildlife that one would expect to find in the wilderness. It is called Big Cottonwood Canyon because it is located right next to a smaller canyon that has conveniently named Little Cottonwood Canyon. Actually, it's located right next to several smaller canyons, but I'm not in the mood to list them. Most are filled with rich people's houses guarded with big fancy gates with names like "Le Mason De Ted" or "Doctor Bill's Palatial Palace". As an interesting side note, these people don't like to buy Scout-o-Rama tickets, so don't waste your time. Anyway, I imagine that after nearly 170 years of constantly being reminded that it is the smaller of the two canyons, Little Cottonwood Canyon has got to be pretty upset, but what is it going to do about it? Glaciate us back into the stone ages? When your movements are measured in eons, it can be hard to exact revenge.

Anyway, now that we know where we are, let's look at a little history. The Big Cottonwood Mining District fired up around the year 1870. The initial prospectors were army scouts sent out by Colonel Patrick O'Connor, and then ran around digging holes here and there, laughing and swearing and doing whatever other things they did. As a reward for their efforts, they discovered several rich ore bodies just waiting to be plucked from the picnic basket of lady nature. The ore generally consisted of our old friend galena (you should read that post again) which was joined by the friendly minerals Chalcopyrite (it's basically just pyrite with copper in it), Sphalerite (zinc mixed with a blast of sulfur), and gold, precious, precious gold. Mining in the canyon continued at a stop-and-go pace until 1967, at which point people decided that skiing in the canyon was more fun than digging little holes in it. From that point onward the mines were forgotten, and the cursing, scratching, prostitute-frequenting miners were replaced by cursing, scratching, prostitute-frequenting lawyers and software designers. The district doesn't have a bad record though. Total metal production amounted to 30,600 ounces of gold, 17.5 million ounces of silver, 18.1 million pounds of copper, 252 million pounds of lead and minty topping of 4.7 million pounds of zinc.

So there we go, now we have the loin-cloth of geologic knowledge that will protect our midsections from the sexually-transmitted diseases of ignorance! The miners have all long left, but look what they left behind! Mines! Mines for us to foolishly explore! In we go!

Well, bad news right from the start. It appears that the Confidence Mine has a little water problem. That's going to happen in mines from time to time. But without water, we wouldn't be able to see the glorious birth of some new stalactites!

In a few hundred thousand years, you are going to have some hefty stalactites on your hands. But you won't get to see them because you'll be long dead. I guess geology got its revenge after all. Now here's something more human in origin...

Wooden stakes! Pounded into the solid rock! These were used to hold cords and powerlines off the floor and out of everyone's way. Now they are just sort...there.

Ah, what fun. Anyway, it's high time we learned where all this water coming from. Look! I think we are hot on the trail....

The water is coming from the very walls we are relying on for life!

Apparently the Confidence Mine has crossed into a rather sizable aquifer within the bedrock. But no time to dwell on that now! Look what we've just found!

That wooden box once held several mighty sticks of dynamite. While it can be fun to come across dynamite boxes, finding dynamite in a mine (which happens on occasion), is a lot less fun. You see, if dynamite doesn't get to fulfill its purpose within a few years of manufacture, it tends to get a little unstable. It's like a Golden Retriever puppy that never gets played with so it ends up being that dog that always seems happy to see you until you get near it and then bites off one of your brand new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle hightops.

Let's continue down the way and see what we can see...

Huh. More water. That's not very interesting. We can see water in the toilet at home. Hey, now here's something...

Looks like we have ourselves some good old-fashioned miner graffito. Miners would burn these cryptic message into the walls using their carbide lamps. What message has this forgotten soul chosen to pass onto generations of the future? Looks like "9+h". As true now as when it was written.

The Confidence Mine belonged to a group named the Union Associated Group. They were probably a stogy group, sitting around smoking their over-sized cigars, talking about how well their coal monopolies were doing. The mine was founded in 1930, and the workings included two adits (that's what mining folk call horizontal shafts), and a single winze (those are what mining folk call smaller vertical shafts within the mine that are used to access lower levels. This is opposed to a "raise" which is the same thing except used to access higher levels). The reason the whole thing was here was because the prospectors saw this vein...

While that vein didn't have any massive gold nuggets on the surface, miners were always willing to chase them into the hillside in the hope that they may start to have something useful in them later on. Sometimes they will chase it using multiple tunnels, which is what they did here. In fact, let's just draw the thing out so we can get a handle on what's going on.

There. The good news is that all those pictures above came from Adit #1! We still have a bunch of mine to explore! In we go!

Look at this! Not more than 30 feet into the mine and we've already hit miners gold!

That is an inclined winze! Those metal rails are probably part of an old ladder. I say maybe because I'm not sure what I'm talking about. Anyway, what I AM sure of is that this shaft has been reclaimed by the water it was stolem from all those years ago...

Ahh, what fun. I don't know what's down there, but I'm suspecting that there was a reason they dug this thing. People are lazy creatures, and digging pits for no reason is rarely an activity we engage in. Or at least I don't, I can't speak for the rest of you. Weirdos.

Let's move on. Deeper and deeper into the mists of questionable quality!

Ooooo..look! Old wooden railroad ties! Still in place after all these years! Now if only we could find railroad rails. Maybe they will show up later. But for now, we've found something else to occupy our time!

It's a stope! I can't remember if we've covered what a stope is already. But if we haven't, it's a cavern created when miners dig out all the ore. It's like how you feel after getting dumped. A sad mockery of the confident person you used to be. Sounds like you need a trip to the Confidence Mine! Onwards! Look at this!

This part of the mine has kinda caved in. Cave-ins are what cause the hair on the back of your neck to stand up as soon as you enter a mine. The hilarious thing is that you are far more likely to die from falling down an abandoned shaft or breathing bad air than you are to die from a cave-in! Ahhhh, go ahead and laugh at yourselves for being so foolish, then let's move on.

Look at this! Another stope! Also there seems to be another tunnel heading off to our right! What mysteries await us down that tunnel? Nazi Gold? Inca Jewels? Or is it something dangerous like a rabid bear, evil Santa, or a Nissan Cube? Let's boldly go where no one has gone...for a while!

Turns out that there was nothing down that tunnel at all. Just some scary darkness. A little further down the tunnel was a hole that lead down into the bowels of nature. I didn't take any pictures of it because I was too busy trying to get away from it. Sometimes mines have unmapped holes. Let's go down the main tunnel some more. I have a feeling we are about to find something awesome. Like good Santa.

Nope! It was the original rails for the ore carts! Still in place! Usually the mines would pull up their tracks whenever they could because you could sell them for money. Mines were largely ventures that were operated with the intent to make money. That's an important thing to remember. But what about the people who used to work these tunnels? What other artifacts can we find that tell us about them?

Well, we know that they drank Schlitz Beer! This can may indicate that someone was in this mine at some point in the 60's or 70's. Unless the miners in the 1930's discovered some way to obtain beers of the future, which I doubt. Who knows though. Hey, maybe that's what this other mysterious panel of miner's musings is all about.

Looks like we have the letter "S" as well as what may or may not be a crude drawing of an ample buttocks. And to think that these poor miners were born too early to enjoy the song "I Like Big Butts". Don't cry now! We've got to finish off the mine!

Oh, here we are. That my friends, is a backfilled tunnel. Sometimes the miners would do this with their waste rock if they had decided that a particular part of the mine wasn't going to work out. You can't tell from the picture, but there is water squirting out from all over the place, so I'm guessing there is some water behind that playful little wall. Let's retreat to a safe distance and take a moment to learn more history.

The confidence mine was not a huge producer. In fact, it was not even a large producer. It was more of a small producer. Leaser mined a little ore in 1931, and in 1932 it produced a small lot of ore that assayed at $30 to $40 a ton in gold, 100 to 150 ounces of silver per ton, 30% lead and 7% copper. These numbers were measure in 1932 dollars, which would be more like $3000 to $3400 per ton in gold nowadays. These numbers are very impressive, but I don't know how much of the ore they were able to pull out of there. I guess it doesn't matter as in 1934 S.A. Parry, president of the Union Associated Group bought the farm and all mining at the Confidence Mine was ended. Now it's all flooded.

And so ends the saga of the Confidence Mine. Our shoes are wet, but our souls are enlightened with geological empowerment! Now, I'm going to go get a burrito. Good day.

Ghost Town Tuesday - Dividend, Utah

2011-08-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

Ghost towns are frustrating.

The works of humans are amazingly short-lived. Say you woke up one day and somehow you were alive in the year 1880. I don't have the energy to think up why this has happened. Maybe you've had a stroke and just think you are in the year 1880, I don't know. Either way, what is the first thing you do? If Back to the Future III has taught us anything, it's that you first need to dump a large load of manure on the town bully to establish yourself as the hero.

After that, we don't really have a script for what to do next. It is my opinion that the first thing you should do is build some sort of store out of wooden planks (as is the style) and sell overpriced, watered-down whiskey to filthy people with bushy beards wearing those ill-fitting suspenders. Like this guy.

(I just needed a picture of an old prospector. I don't know why he is panning for little multicultural human torsos. Ignore that part). Expect to do this for a good 6 or 7 years until you get shot, drink some bad water and get a gut worm, or until the nearby mines run out of ore. After that, what you do is none of my concern. But what about your store?

Without maintenance, your average wood-plank structure will probably last a good 30 years before the weather or gravity or teenagers finally destroy it*. If it was built by some sort of legendary wood-plank builder company, it may even last up to 90 years. But that's about all you are going to get. After that, it will fall down and re-enter the food chain and that will be that. And therein lies the problem with ghost towns.

The ghost town of dividend has largely re-entered the food chain. In fact, it looks much like a field that has never been populated.

That, my friends, is the town of dividend. While it may not look like much now, it was once a place where things were much less....field-like.

The story of Dividend begins in the grand old year of 1916. Woodrow Wilson was president, cars still made that amusing "Ah-ooo-gah" sound, and deaths from digestive diseases were down while World War I related deaths were way up. But these things don't concern us. Our story centers on this guy....

That kindly-looking gentleman is EJ Raddatz, and it was his dream that gave rise to the town of Dividend. Mr. Raddatz was a prospector (despite the overall lack of beard and blood-alcohol level of 56%) and he had a hunch about a plot of previously unproductive land in the East Tintic Mining District in north-centralish Utah (here)...

Look at that! An old-timesy image of Utah! Taken straight out of an old government document written about the very subject we are covering! I feel it adds an air of professionalism to what is otherwise a pretty lightly investigated post. Go ahead and look at that map whenever you think things are getting too stupid. Anyway, that map was prepared in 1919, so let's update it a little bit....

There. Now we've brought it to the 2000's. That little square in the middle is the area we are looking at, by the way. Let's zoom in....

That last picture got all blurry. Maybe it will be better if you click on it. Anyway, that's an aerial photo of the townsite. You can still see the roadways! What's unusual is that you can't see them from ground level. Ahh, technology. Let's get back to Mr. Raddatz.

Mr. Raddatz knew there were minerals under his feet. We don't know how he knew that, but he knew that he was standing on a great spot for a mine. The year was 1907, and mining was a great way for anyone with a little capital to strike it rich (or lose everything trying). Mr Raddatz was no exception, so he created the Tintic Standard Mining Company and released a million shares of stock in an attempt to raise the funds he needed to find the good stuff deep within the earth. To help him with the actual digging, he hired this man....

That there is John Westerdahl, an experienced miner and first foreman of the Tintic Standard Mine. Mr Westerdahl and crew dug and dug and dug this shaft.....

(That shaft has since be reclaimed, so this may be the only time you ever get to see it. Bask in the glory!) For months they dug blindly into the hillside until the money started to dry up. The miners started to get paid in shares of stock instead of money, which wasn't great at the time as the mine had yet to produce anything of value. Most miners sold these shares or traded them for booze. Then one day they noticed a weird gas coming out of the shaft....

The government geologist inspected the site and determined that the gas was coming from some large sulfur-rich ore body! At last some good news! In 1916 the miners finally found the big pay day. At a depth of 1,200 below the very place that Mr. Raddatz was standing years before existed a massive lead-silver deposit that would prove to be one of the largest strikes in the Tintic District. It was named the Tintic Standard Mine.

(Look close, you can still see the words "Tintic Standard" written on the tanks). By 1918, a town had sprung up around the mine. At first it was just housing for the miners, but soon it also featured a school house, a store, barber shop, pool hall, a post office and hotel. A newspaper, The Standard, even showed up from 1924 to 1925. A population 350 men, women and probably some children called this land home, and anyone who had kept their stock certificates were rewarded with over one and a half million dollars in dividends from the mine by 1922. As was usual for such a town, the mine towered over everything....

The town was to the east of the mine and consisted of a few streets of nicely organized houses.

The mine complex consisted of the shaft (actually 3 shafts. Shafts are an important part of any mining venture), the assay house....

(You may be saying "Hey! How do you know that's the assay house? That could be any pile of rubble! I hate this blog so much!" Well, I know because the ground is littered with these little assay cups....

(And where do we find assay cups? Why, in the assay office. So that's how I'm guessing this was the assay house. So get off my back already.) Also included was a warming house, where the miners could warm up after being down in the mines....

(The warming house also made it difficult for miners to "borrow" pieces of rich ore for themselves. You see, if rich ore was struck and you could sneak it out of the mine without that jerk of a supervisor seeing you, then you could trade that ore in for all sorts of whiskey. This practice was known as high-grading, and mine owners hated people who did it. Almost as much as cave-ins and the environment).

Also included was the company store....

One of these things....

A railroad to get the ore from point A to point somewhere else....

And a variety of things that fall into the "misc" category....

Look! Here's an old mine elevator! This little bugger made countless trips up and down and back up again before being forgotten on a heap of waste rock. There's a lesson here kids. No matter how hard you work, everyone ends up sitting on a pile of waste in the end.

Ore from the mine assayed as high as 80 ounces of silver to the ton, and 22 percent copper. These are good numbers for a mine. It's like having a blood pressure around 110 over 70, or getting 40 miles to the gallon. The ore was chased down to the 1,600 foot level, with galena, tetrahedrite, pyrite and sphalerite forming the most valuable ore. This little guy showed up from time to time too....

That is a mineral named argentojarosite, and if you love silver, then get this mineral drunk and take it home to bed. It's basically silver with some yellow mixed in. The Tintic Standard Mine was the first place this mineral was ever discovered, and as such it has become the "Type Locality" for it. It's an honor to be considered a "type locality" for a mineral. It's like being the kid who finally breaks the pinata, or getting a seat on the bus that isn't covered in urine stains. Pretty great.

And so, the mine pumped kept pumping out minerals. For a while it was the leading silver producing mine in the United States, and gained a relatively high degree of fame for being so. In order to process this ore, a large, state of the art mill was built on the western slope of the mountains to the east of the mine, and was named (not surprisingly) the Tintic Standard Reduction Mill.

That mill lasted from 1921 to 1925 before it shut down due to the whole thing going from innovative to obsolete. Kids love painting things on other things, so now the mill looks like this...

At some point during the operation of the mill someone managed to steal a 50-ton ore car of high-grade ore (in an epic example of "high grading" as described above). The ore car was found 6 months later in Mexico, but was as empty as chubby kid's self-esteem. I didn't steal it, but I certainly can see why someone did.

In 1920, the town decided it needed a name. It had been going by the name "Standard" (if you don't know where they came up with that name then you need to read things more closely). The problem with that is that there is a town named "Standardville" in Carbon County, and it was messing with the postal service. So a contest was held to come up with a new name, and the name "Dividend" was selected. Again, you should be able to figure out where this came from too.

I hate to have to remind you, but we are dealing with a ghost town. This means that at some point things have to go down-hilll for the town. Prosperous towns don't just suddenly wrap up shop and go on their way. Only loser towns. And sadly, Dividend's term as a place that exists was nearly up. In 1949, the mine ran out of paying ore and the last shipment was made during that year. Don't feel bad though! During the period it was worked, the mine produced 2,327,148 tons of ore valued at approximately $80,000,000. A tasty $19,000,000 of this total was paid out to lucky mine shareholders who didn't use their shares as toilet paper during the rough times.

With no mine, there was no need for a mining town. And so, as we've seen before several times, the town got flushed down the big ol' history toilet.

The majority of the buildings were removed in the 50's cus if they don't exist you don't have to pay taxes on them. Any houses that weren't removed suffered a teenager-based end (lit on fire). So that leaves us with this....

That is to say, not a whole lot. A few concrete foundations, a few stone walls and probably a whole bunch of ghosts. The mine is really the only item of interest in the area (unless you really like concrete foundations and a few stone walls). It is because of this that I made that rant at the start of this post. Ghost towns never seem to last.

So we leave the once busy town of Dividend. Perhaps one day new mines will be discovered in the area and the town will be re-built and the mines will roar back to life. It's not very likely though. I'm going to go trade my shares in for some whiskey.

*If you have really chased this Astrix all the way down here from that first paragraph, I just wanted to make sure that you all know that I have no idea how long wooden structures will last if they aren't maintained. I hope this was reward enough to justify worrying about it.

Important Blog Update!

2011-07-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

It is my birthday.

At this point all I can do is sit back and remember how excited I used to get over my birthday. When I was younger (and less disgusted with the world) I would spend the days before birthday sitting around wearing this goofy expression on my face and watch Duck Tales.

Sadly, as is true with everything, getting older has taken the fun out of birthdays.

For example, I'm writing this at work. To a kid, the idea of working on your birthday would seem as outrageous as the concept of car ownership.

A lot of people thing that the reason birthdays aren't as much fun in later years is because we become increasingly aware of the limits of mortality. While it's true that an 85-year old probably has more reason to fear the increasingly likelihood of not waking up tomorrow, I don't think that is the main reason that birthdays are less entertaining. I suspect that the cause lays with the decreasing quality/entertaining value of the presents. Kids get great presents

Adults, on the other hand, get decidedly less fun presents. Useful, sure, but less fun.

I'm not saying that I hate getting useful things. Even as a kid you need to get socks or playing with your SUPER FUN PRETEND GUN FUN TIME will become a painful ordeal. What I am saying is that a birthday filled ONLY with useful gifts is equally troubling as a birthday filled ONLY with fun gifts. All the socks in the world won't help you pretend to defend President Lincoln from a swarm of robotic ants and becoming the hero of the coal-age.

Old people need fun gifts more than anyone because they have the shortest amount of time left to reach their desired fun-having goals, and yet they frequently receive the most unfortunate mixture of not-very-useful AND not-very-fun gifts.

So, what is the point of this? I'm not sure myself. Mostly I've just enjoyed not working for the last couple of hours. You should probably all wish me a happy birthday though. Go ahead! The button is right down there in the corner! Do it!!!

Variscite - What does it mean to you?

2011-07-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

Folks, today I guide you into the unknown. And by that, I mean I don't have a lot of information about today's mineral. What's worse, the mineral is so obscure that not a lot of books seem to care much about it. But if you read every post on this blog (and I don't recommend that you do, there's been some real stinkers in there) you will find that I never give a guarantee that the "information" imparted here-forth is technically correct. But it will be close, and that's good enough for me.

Anyway, forget everything you've ever known about anything, because things are about to get really existential in here. Today we visit the world of the phosphorus-bearing minerals. Now, there is bound to be a lot of resistance to this, and I can honestly understand why. I mean, it's not every day that someone comes up to you and says "Hey, I have a great idea, let's delve into the world of some crazy hydrous, alluminium-bearing phosphate mineral with a hardness of 4.5!" Of course, your first reaction will be to tell me to go back to whatever nerd-hut I've escaped from. Well, don't worry, I'm not going to get too out of bounds with this post, although it would be quite easy (and quite tempting) to do so.

Today's mineral is a playful, unassuming little feller named Variscite....

Here's what it looks like if you take a picture of it too closely with the flash on....

Anyway, go ahead and bask in the glory of that poorly-photographed mineral! Allow it to change your perceptions of geology! Like many, many other minerals we've looked at, Variscite is green (most of the time). My friends, this is just the beginning. Put those burritos back in the microwave, because I'm serving up a heaping pot of mineralological what-the-devil-is-going-on pie and cramming it down your throats!

As I said above, the Variscite is the green portions of that rock. I'm not sure what the white stuff is, and don't really care. I'm guessing you don't either. Let's look at some more pictures of the stuff so we can get a better handle on what is going on here....

Not too impressive. Just sort of a greenish-blob. But what if IT WERE ATTACKED BY INDIANA JONES IN AN AIRPLANE???

And also....A NAZI!!!

As long as I've already destroyed any sense of personal worth by revealing that not only have I purchased Lego toys but that I also enjoy playing with them, we might as well push it to the limit! Look out Indy!

Vrooom!!! Bang Bang Bang!!

Look at that! That Nazi is flying into my ceiling fan!!!

The Nazi crashed! USA! USA!

Dooo do do dooooooooo!!!

It is pretty hard to fly two Lego planes by using your roommates dog leashes and take pictures of it at the same time. So if that makes that last part any less stupid to you then so be it. Either way, it serves as good filler for an otherwise info-light post.

As I mentioned earlier, Variscite has a hardness of 4.5. This places it squarely between scratching it with an iron nail and with a steel knife. So, yeah, there's some information for you hardness weirdos out there.

Chemically, Variscite is made of one atom of aluminum, one atom of phosphorus, four atoms of oxygen, and then a couple of water molecules for a final chemical formula of ALPO4*H2O. If we mix a little math into this, we come up with a whopping 17.8% aluminum, 19.2% phosphorus, 60.76% oxygen and whatever is left gets stuffed full of hydrogen. That 60.76% oxygen seems weird to me, but I'm not here to criticize geology. Anyway, you mix those things together and you get a slightly green mineral....THAT IS BLOWING UP THE BERLIN WALL!!!

Nah, that's just more filler. What you get is a mineral that is slightly green, but isn't really capable of righting any of the worlds ills. But Vaiscite isn't always green. Like most minerals it shows up in a variety of colors. Well, mostly just green and red....

I've never seen any red Variscite, but I suppose it's possible. Also it is pretty rare that it shows up in crystals. Mostly the stuff sticks with massive blobs (called nodules) that are various shades of green....

Those are pieces from a place named Clay Canyon in Utah. Remember how I said that Variscite is somewhat obscure? Well, that's because it is also pretty rare. In fact, the state of Utah is pretty much the main producer of the stuff. It was for this reason (I'm suspecting) that it also goes by the name Utahlite. The material from Clay Canyon is pricey because the mine that used to be there was shut down when the State of Utah discovered that the gentleman mining it was somewhat lax when it came to safety, and would frequently light sticks of dynamite outside of the mine, run in, place the explosive in the hole and try to run back out again before getting variscite-ed. As a result, the mine was collapsed so the dude wouldn't kill himself, which tends to drive prices up for the existing material. I went there once and poked around the mine dump but I got a bunch of sap on my shoe and decided to leave. The other main place to get Variscite is located in one of the oft-forgotten corner of the state....

Not a lot of people find their way out to that part of Utah. And probably for good reason, as it has more crazies per square mile than most areas of the state. That area produces Variscite that has less cool shapes and patterns and is more just solid green. The piece from the first picture is from that corner of the state, so you can go look at that again if you are having a hard time picturing it. The nearest town to that particular deposit is Lucin, Utah (which is now a ghost town), and it was for this name that Variscite was also known as Lucinite. That's three names for the same mineral! That should help keep the confusion down.

So there we are. Variscite comes from Utah (and a little from other places). So what is it good for? Well, again, like everything else we've looked at, not a whole lot. We can make pretty things to adorn our women with it....

Variscite sometimes takes the place of turquoise (which is basically variscite but with a little copper mixed in) but it is a little bit softer so it scratches easier. Hey, do you guys remember scratch and sniff books? Do they still make those? I'm going to have to investigate this later. Anyway, it can also be confused with Chrysocolla, (a copper mineral that is chemically nothing like either mineral) that kinda has the same color.

So how did Utah end up with so much of the stuff and poor Iowa is left out in the cold? Well, apparently Iowa didn't have enough phosphate-rich water flowing around its aluminum-rich rocks! Utah, on the other hand, had more phosphate-water than it knew what to do with, and it was this water that reacted with the native limestone that contained some aluminum for some reason. Let's look at what I've just said in a much more confusing way....

Did that clear it up? Nah, it didn't for me either. Fun to draw though.

For you metaphysical types, it is said that Variscite can help you remember your past lives! That's a heck of a thing! So if you pick up a piece of Variscite and suddenly remember getting your bowels torn out for believing that the earth wasn't the center of the universe, that's why. Hey, if you aren't prepared to suddenly remember being racked with torment, then perhaps you aren't prepared to be a geologist.

And so we end our first phosphorus-bearing mineral. The phosphates (as minerals with phosphorus are called) are an interesting bunch, so perhaps we will see them again. You can never tell with geology.

Ghost Town Whatever - Iosepa, Utah!

2011-07-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

Western Utah is a neat place to visit. As we have covered (repeatedly) on this blog, you can find mines, cattle, rusted objects of nearly any size, crazies with guns, barbwire (the fence-object, not the movie), the military, the potential to become encrusted with salt, and any other number of things that drive people mad with visit-lust. Western Utah, however, is NOT a neat place to live. You can find mines, cattle, rusted objects of any size, barbwire, the military, the potential to become encrusted with salt, and any other number of things that drive people mad with I-don't-want-to-live-here-lust.

However, once in every great while, someone figures that they will give it a go and they pack up all their belongings and head out for the great and probably haunted western portion of the state. This well-written introduction gives us the backdrop for our next little ghost town....

You may notice that sign has a rather "island" theme, what with the aloha and all. And there's a reason for that, but I'll touch on that later. First lets get our bearings. If you find yourself with a mean case of Iosepa-madness and want to take a look for yourself, you can find the place here....

Or, just drive around and look for this sign...

It's kinda near Mercur and Ophir and stuff. The nearest city with people is Tooele. Well, technically it's Dugway, but don't go there....

The story of Iosepa begins way back in the fruitful year of 1889. Well, technically it begins earlier. Geologically it begins even earlier than that, but I'm not going to talk about that. In the 1880, Mormon missionaries had been hanging out in Hawaii doing their thing, and as a result, they converted a number of Hawaii-folk. These converts decided to visit Salt Lake City for themselves and check out what all the fuss was about, and upon visiting they decided that they would like to stay and help build the temple and then visit the temple and do all the other things that mormons like to do. At first there were 50 or so visitors, then 75, and so on and so forth.

But people are fickle things. Sometimes we don't all get along because we are jerks. The Hawaiian visitors soon found that most of the folks living in the city were strange and had very little to no Hawaiian culture in them, so they decided that they would like to create their own little city. Now, Utah has very little useful land, and by the 1890's most of that land was already spoken for. So the Hawaiians got a slightly less than ideal plot....

In 1889, a whopping 1,280 acres of that stuff was purchased at a cost of $40,000, and with that the mighty metropolis of Iosepa shuttered with its first mighty breath on the night of August 28th of that year!

It didn't take long for the good Hawaiian folks to realize that this....

Is a different experience than this...

And there's way less this...

And much much more of this....

But they were a determined bunch, and that spring the townsite was surveyed so every adult male and widow got to draw lots. They named the town "Iosepa" which is "Joseph" in Hawaiian. This was a shout out to both the Prophet Joseph F. Smith, who was a very successful missionary in Hawaii, as well as to the other Prophet Joseph Smith, who established the church. That's an example of multitasking I suppose. In 1890, the site was dedicated by the Prophet Wilford Woodruff, and with that the flag went down and the colony was ready to take off. Only it didn't really. Here's some of the chaps now!

The town was soon exploding with well-built houses, a church (presumably of the Mormon faith), a school house and roads to get to all these places. Concrete pipes carried every last drop of water from the hills down to the town, and fire-hydrants were installed. This was a good idea, as fires prefer damp-free environments such as western Utah. Probably the most impressive project was the lake they dug in the middle of the valley....

I've never dug a lake, but I'm assuming it is a very difficult thing to do. They stocked the lake (named Kanaka Lake) with trout and carp and other fish for feasting on, and even tinkered around with growing various sea-weeds. Neat!

In an attempt to make the valley somewhat less horrifying, cottonwood and poplar trees were planted down the center of each of the roadways, and yellow roses were planted in most of the yards. Corn, wheat, barley, beets and other delicious foods were grown in the fields, and cattle and pigs were free to walk about and grow fat for the slaughter! In addition, 300 fruit trees, 300 walnut trees, as well as 100 ornamental plant-like objects were installed. The residents of the town even celebrated their version of pioneer day on August 28th instead of July 24th like the other folks. For a while, things seemed to be actually working. In one year the residents made a cool $20,000 in profit from their cattle and wheat and such. Most years weren't that kind though.

And so things went. As if hard work and exposure wasn't enough, a friendly little visitor named leprosy came to town, and three residents soon found themselves swimming with the disease. A "pest house" was built at the edge of town and the three residents were isolated from the rest. They could raise a flag when they needed something. Here are the three lepers nowadays...

The flagpole at the back of the picture was built in their memory. If you see a flag up there, then that means they've come back as zombies and you should stay away. Anyway, this was the only leper colony to ever exist in Utah. Unless you know about one that I don't I guess. If you do, go write your own blog and leave me alone.

By 1901 the population stood at 80 brave souls, and it would reach a maximum of 228 by 1915. The city won the state prize for being the most progressive (whatever that means) and best kept city in the state in 1911, which is pretty good for a town located in a placed called Skull Valley.

The main problem facing the town was the fact that everyone kept dying. The climate and difficult work kept killing people off faster than they were being born and moving in. As a result, the cemetery soon became a very big place....

Unlike most of the towns that we have looked at so far, the graveyard isn't filled with people with names like "Ol Prospecting Alcoholic Jim" or "Shotgun Prostitute Sally". It's fill with names like this....

I'm not sure that Besse Peters was Hawaiian. Doesn't seem like it fits with the others. There actually were a few white folk living in town, so maybe she was one of them. I'd ask her but she's pretty dead.

Connie Hoopiianina was actually not the last burial. That belonged to this lady....

The Hoopiianina family was one of the few who stayed in the state. We'll cover that later. This next grave belonged to the local judge. Now he's the one behind bars.

Ironic, isn't it? Nope, it isn't. The official historical marker put up by the the state of Utah is near the cemetery. The bust on top is that of a Hawaiian warrior, which is pretty neat.

Having an accelerated death rate is a bad promotional tool for a town. In 1916 the Mormon Church announced plans to construct a temple in Hawaii. This rendered the town of Iosepa obsolete, and by 1917 the remaining townfolk sold their property to the Church and most moved back to Hawaii. And so ended the little hamlet of Iosepa.

Not a lot is left out there. Obviously there is the graveyard, as we've seen. The townsite was later sold to the Deseret Livestock Company, and cattle became the new residents of Iosepa. There are still four houses standing and occupied by ranchers!

I didn't dare go very close because sometimes people in western Utah get a little shooty if you wander onto their land. Something to think about whenever you go out there. Other than those remaining houses, the land offers very few clues that it was once occupied....

Miles and miles of sweet sweet nothingness. Something in this bush was making a really loud, terrifying noise....

Then when I was walking back when I was attacked by the worst creature Utah has to offer...

That is one of the most terrifying thing I have ever found on my shoe. At nearly 10 feet long and weighing in at approximately 4,500 pounds, this cricket-like car was reason enough for me to leave the place. Also I technically should have been at work.

And so my visit ends. There is now a pavilion built next to the graveyard in which a large luau is held every Memorial day weekend. Seems fitting. Also they cook pigs and emu in these crazy pits...

So, if you've got a hankerin' for some sweet sweet bird meat, and aren't scared of T-Rexickets, then I vote you go. I can't make you, and I don't care what you do, but think about it.

Behold!

2011-06-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

This post isn't about rocks. It isn't about ghost towns, mines, homemade dilbert cartoons, or any of the other stuff I usually pass off as educational material. No, this post is about the fact that our little club of virtual geologists has expanded to 32 people! No longer could you fit us all in a sensibly-sized sedan! In fact, there are restaurants that would have a hard time accommodating us all! So go ahead and give yourself a hearty handshake (don't let other people see you) and drink deeply of the milkshake of self-satisfaction! And as added bonus, I figure I might as well let you all have a sneak-peak into the things I have planned for this blog....More of the same! Everyone hates change!

Ghost Town Thursday - Silver Reef, Utah (Part III)

2011-06-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

Alright, I've given you all a couple of months to absorb and appreciate the monumental amount of well-documented history I presented in the last couple of posts. Hopefully you have all taken advantage of the opportunity to reflect on what Silver Reef means to you. Sadly, it probably doesn't mean a whole lot, although I suppose it would be equally sad if it meant too much.

At the end of Part II (which you can read below again if you want, but I warn you it hasn't changed), things were really getting underway for the hamlet of Silver Reef. And if there's one lesson that history has repeatedly taught us, it is that wherever you find people you are going to also find corpses.

People like to hang out with people who share their interests. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. If you are a chef, then chances are that you will spend your time with similarly culinary-oriented folks. If you are a hair-cutter, then you will probably enjoy swapping stories about hair (and the cutting thereof) with other hair-cutters. The only people who don't follow this trend are the odd folks who spend their time dreaming about forming militias and mailing explosives. Those people tend to stick to themselves, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Corpses also like to hang out with corpses of similar interests. In Silver Reef, the corpses have been sorted according to religious beliefs. There's the Catholic Cemetery...

Unfortunately time has taken its toll on the headstones of the land, and most of them have (like their owners) turned to dust. The area is now filled with simple wooden plaques that say "Unknown".

Say you were a Protestant and you found yourself without a pulse in Silver Reef. Then they would shuttle you off to the Protestant graveyard.

This graveyard too has very few original gravestones remaining, and thus is also filled with unknown bodies. But it still has a few survivors....

The first thing you will notice after walking around an old cemetery is that gravestones used to be way sadder. Nowadays people write stuff like "Well, I died" on their graves. The older gravestones have sad little poems and messages to their kids and family about how much everyone misses everyone else. I don't know why this has changed, as death is still somewhat inconvenient to the survivors. Maybe we are just better at accepting our fates nowadays.

Silver Reef had a booming Chinese population who operated laundries, opium dens and such. It was rare that Chinese folk were allowed to work the mines (cus racism), so they did the other tasks that presented themselves although they were usually poorly paid for doing them. The Chinese had their own cemetery in Silver Reef, but at a later date a Chinese guy who lived in Silver Reef for a while made a fortune in San Francisco and paid to have all the Chinese corpses dug up and sent back to China. So now there isn't a Chinese cemetery.

Anyway, this is no time to fixate on the dead. There were still plenty of living folks in Silver Reef!
These folks worked the mines, crushed rocks, served beer, spit, cussed, and did all the things we've come to know and love about old mining towns. By 1888, most of the mines had reached a depth where groundwater started to be a problem. You see, humans have a hard time working in water that is deeper than they are tall. Pumping water out of a mine is an expensive proposition, and the deeper you go, the more expensive it gets. All the mines on the southern portions of the district struck rich deposits of water at about 300 feet. Also the value of silver dropped like a rock and it soon became hard to justify dropping yourself down into a soaked, dank hole in the ground for the stuff. Formal operations closed up shop, and for the next few decades the mines were leased to "chloriders" or independent miners who didn't answer to anyone. These folks, as entrepreneurial as they were, were not enough to justify the continued existence of a town, and so, Silver Reef was abandoned.

Most of the houses were sold off for the bricks, lumber and dreams they contained. One lucky gentleman found $20,000 worth of gold coins within the walls of an abandoned saloon, and soon everyone with a deed and a sledgehammer was bashing into their houses looking for more wall-bound treasure. What wasn't bashed down to the ground was burnt to the ground in 1908.

Things were pretty quiet after that. For 20 years the place just sat as a burnt, smashed wreck. Then, in 1929, the American Smelting and Refining Company decided to poke around and make sure nothing was missed the first time around. In order to connect up with several of the other mines, they sunk a huge shaft up on top of White Reef....

This impressive hole in the ground reaches for a good 540 feet below the surface. If you fell down it, you would have a few seconds to decide which graveyard to be buried in before you became all squished at the bottom. Anyway, at this depth, the shaft connected with all the other mines in the area. They poked around and found that the area still contains a bunch of silver, but nothing seems to have come of it, and the good folks of American Smelting and Refining Company took off.

And so, the district was again left to the ghosts and squirrels and whatever else lives out there. But it turns out that silver isn't the only treat the district had to offer. Uranium abounds in the district, and the miners of old probably enjoyed some extensive exposure to its DNA altering rays. I'm not saying that there are mutants living in the mines nowadays, but I can't rule it out. The Uranium Boom was underway in the years after WWII, and people couldn't wait to get down into the dirt and get some low level radiation poisoning. The Leeds Sandstone was filled with various uranium-bearing rocks, and in 1950 the first shipment of ore averaging 8.68 tons with 0.56% uranium was mined from the East Reef....

The new mining in the area gave rise to this mysterious mine! I don't know the name of it though. Let's call it "ol' holey".

Also, the Duffin Mine was re-opened. There's still some old mining stuff sitting around it, which is pretty slick. I think it was an old compressor, but I'm not sure. It was full of oil if that helps you imagine it.

As long as people were going to be nosing around deep underground, they figured they might as well investigate the potential for going back in for more silver as well. A few folks investigated the Cobb Mine (as mentioned in Part II) and discovered that silver still abounds in the sandstoney catacombs, but again nothing really ever came of it. Silver is a fickle mistress.

Anyway, in order to get the district back up and running for the uranium boom, a brand new ore bin was built right in the center of town.

But as any mining outfit worth its salt will tell you, a fancy new ore bin isn't enough. You also need a company headquarters. And so, the Western Gold and Uranium Company set up shop in the old Wells Fargo Building...

Contrary to popular belief, silver ore isn't all that impressive. It usually shows up at brown to black crusts, which is pretty disappointing considering the wide array of colors available to minerals nowadays. Uranium minerals, on the other hand, are usually pretty impressive. Take Carnotite for example...

Behold the slightly-yellow beauty! That little fellow was one of the ores that people were looking for deep underground. It is more radioactive than 30 mutant space cats. Take a look at the pieces that go together to form it!

CARNOTITE - K2(UO2)2(VO4)2*3H2O

See that little UO2 guy? That is Uranium Oxide, and for good or ill it gave us bombs of unusual kabooie-ness. The Carnotite deposits were put in place much like the silver and copper, namely, they formed around the plants that deposited with the sandstone. Carnotite seems to have an unusual preference towards forming around the sides of tree stumps. Anyway, there was a big pile of waste rock located near Old Holey, and I would imagine it will be reclaimed soon. Nothing brings down land values like having a big radioactive pit in your backyard.

If silver and uranium weren't your things, then you could always go into business mining this stuff...

That greenish-goo looking mineral is Volborthite, and unlike it Carnotite it doesn't have a lick of radioactivity in it. Well, unless it does. Minerals like to do crazy things sometimes. Anyway, Volborthite has a healthy dose of vanadium in it, which is used to make steel extra hard. Extra hard steel was all the rage in the 1950's.

Sadly, once again Silver Reef was to feel the bitter sting of being abandoned. Carnotite and Volborthite are good and all, but they aren't the sorts of things that really entice people to stick around. As a summary, the district shipped nearly $8,000,000 worth of silver (which is nearly $22,000,000 worth in today's money!), with the biggest producers being the Barbee and Walker, Leeds, Manhattan, Tecumseh, Savage, Buckeye, Maggie and California mines. I don't know the monetary value of the uranium that came out of the area, but I'm betting it was more money than I'll ever see. Recently the area has become repopulated, and several rather stately houses have been built only feet from the crumbling ruins of other old houses.

If you go to Silver Reef nowadays, the main attraction is the museum, which has followed in the footsteps of Wells Fargo and the Western Gold and Uranium Company by setting up shop in the old Wells Fargo Building.

The museum is free (although donations are appreciated), and has a neat collection of Silver Reef memorabilia, such as ore carts...

As well as assay cups...

Just to name a few of the items that are there for your visual enjoyment. I vote you go there. The same organization that operates the museum also is working towards possibly recreating a portion of the town. Which would be neat.

And so we leave Silver Reef (just like everyone else has done several times). Mining is dangerous work, and even moreso back in the day before anyone really was too concerned with safety. It was an unusual breed of human who was willing to jump down there every day for a living. It was hard work, but it was honest work (I would imagine. I wasn't there) and the old miners prided themselves on being honest men, and you know what they say about honest men...

THE END

But also, here are some other pictures of old mines in the district. They may have had names, but I don't know them. It's WAY fun to make up names for the mines yourself! Go ahead, give it a try! Remember we've already used Old Holey.

Ghost Town Tuesday - Silver Reef, Utah (Part II)

2011-04-28T15:53:00.001-07:00

It wasn't long before other rich deposits were discovered in the Silver Reef area. In the autumn of 1877, the Leeds Company was created and started to mine the White Reef area which is the name given to this particular sandstone ledge....

It was here that the Leeds Company opened the surprisingly productive and cleverly named Leeds Mine...

and the equally cleverly named Leeds #2 Mine....

In addition, the Leeds Company opened a 5 stamp mill to handle the ore that was pouring out of the hillside....

In the spirit of competition, the Christy Milling and Mining Company was incorporated in 1877, and they opened a 5-stamp mill of their own...

This peaceful little building was built right at the corner of town, and probably spewed economic smog all over the place. Not much of the mill remains....

By this time the mines were booming, and lots of people who didn't mind crawling down into little holes for a living were required to work them. Luckily for us, the mines in Pioche Nevada had just started to putter out, so everyone from there came rushing over here. This event was big enough to earn the name the "Pioche Stampede" and it was soon noticed that all these people were going to need a place to stay and woo prostitutes. And so begins Silver City, although it was originally named "Rockpile" because it was nothing but tents all over a big pile of rocks. Silver Reef is far more marketable anyway. Here's what the townsite looks like to God and astronauts nowadays!

This map isn't particularly interesting to us. But with a spoonful of imagination and a dumptruck of internet help, maybe we can get a better picture of how the town would have been laid out...

Look at that! The town has sprung to life before our very eyes! Now imagine that you can read the words on that map. If you could, you would see that in 1879 Silver Reef had a booming Chinese population, several saloons, a hospital, schools, and everything else that a miner would need to enjoy themselves. What's that? You wish you could see what Main Street looked like? Well, save your wishes my electronic friend! Behold!

And say you were traveling to Silver Reef, but didn't know what the town looked like from a distance? Well, I can help you out there too...

And for no reason, here's a picture of some guy just leaning and hanging out....

And here's a picture of some sort of old building! Who knows what it was used for? Hat repair? Mule refurbishment? It's a mystery!

Here's an old-timey picture of the two remaining buildings at Silver Reef. The building on the right is the Wells Fargo/Museum building. The one one the left is a house that belongs to one Mr. J.N.Rice. He's probably dead now.

In addition to the two complete structures still standing at Silver Reef, there are several kinda-there structures. Here's the moldering remains of the Harrison House Hotel. That's what happens when you don't tip the room service...

And here's a wall to P. Clancy's store. Shoplifters find this arrangement pretty agreeable.

Aaaand here's the town Skull Fortress.

Just kidding. Silver Reef didn't ever feature a skull fortress. At least not one that anyone has record of. Finally, here are the remains of the Silver Reef Miner's Printing Office.

In all, approximately 1,500 people called this place home by 1879. In addition, several new mines had been discovered along Buckeye Reef....

Included in these new mines was the Hartman Shaft...

The Savage Shaft...

As well as the California Mine....

Just to name a few. These productive mines were joined by several new mine discoveries made along the White Reef, such as the Cobb Mine...

The Nichols Mine....

And finally, the famous Barbee and Walker Mine. The good people at the Barbee and Walker Mine built their own mill at the mine site. See?

I've labeled the stone wall in both pictures for your convenience! I am a merciful blog-guy, am I not? Anyway, that mill burned to the ground in 1879, but was rebuilt and back grinding up ore by 1880. The Barbee and Walker Mine was built using a 30 degree incline that lead down 270 feet to a 3 to 4 foot wide ore zone. Sadly, this mine collapsed a few years after being abandoned, even though it was one of the few mines not constantly battling groundwater. Would these new mines see Silver Reef through to the new century? Or would the fickle nature of nature destroy their hard work, and leave naught but corpses? Stay tuned for Part III!!