Yesterday I took a day away from the conference center in beautiful downtown Denver, and went on an excursion up into the surrounding mountains with my good friend, Mary Ann Sansonetti. What a wonderful trip!
We boarded the bus with about 50 ISTE attendees and family members at around 9:45. The bus ride was almost continually uphill for the next hour. The mountains on either side of us were simply breathtaking. We arrived at the Silver Plume train station with just enough time to eat the boxed lunches provided with our tour. Then it was “All Aboard!” around the loop to the Lebanon Tunnel Mine.
As we walked down the hill from the train stop to the mine entrance, we saw they were dividing our tour into three smaller groups with two women guides and one man guide. Mary Ann and I took one look at the guy and both immediately decided we wanted him to be our guide. His name is Walter. He had a ruggedness about him that comes from a life of working hard. We immediately knew we made the right choice. Walter spoke with the knowledge of a man who has worked in the mines. His grandfather and father before him were miners. Walter still competes in mining competitions that sound much like those lumberjack shows you see on television every so often. And nearly every story he told, whether fact, funny, or sad, ended with an infectious laugh that sounded like it came from the back of his mind where he was remembering more of the story that he chose not to reveal. It was just his little joke with himself. He was wonderful.
We entered the mine near the bottom. When it was in its heyday it rose up through the mountains in layers like an ant colony. When the mine was first established in the early 1800′s, men dug it out of the rock with hand tools. They worked 10 to 12 hour shifts around the clock with a goal of digging 10 to 12 feet a day. Immediately upon entering the mine, we were shown the bracing put in place by the original miners. Once they got the opening deep enough, they braced it up with wooden beams and then took an 8′ long railroad tie, sharpened it down on one end, and drove it deep into the rock above the beams. One after one, driven neatly next to one another, those ties are still there.
Walter gave us a demonstration of how the miners worked to dig into the walls as they followed a spider-web of silver ore or minerals that teased them into thinking silver was just a few inches out of site in one direction or another. The men worked in pairs. One would hold a 4′ long drilling spike. He would face the wall of the mine and lay the back end of the spike on his shoulder while his hands firmly held the point of the spike at the place it would begin its burial into the stone. His partner would stand behind him and swing an 8 pound sledge hammer to strike the blunt end of the spike that was waiting precariously near the back of his partner’s head. After each blow, the one holding the spike would twist and pull on the spike to free it up so it could be removed. And he had to do all that before the next blow came. Needless to say, once you got a partner you usually worked with that one guy for life…no matter how short that might be in the mine.
My mouth was already open as Walter continued. Each man was given 3 candles for the day. That was the only light in the mine. So, in this mine filled with men swinging hammers and stirring up ore dust creating a fog nearly impossible to see through, the one with the hammer kept his eye on the glint of steel that shown from the faint candle light. That was the target for his sledge. The steam powered hoist was so loud it could be head in town some two miles away. These men could not communicate with one another. If the one holding the spike had to rest, there was only one way to let his partner know. He had to cover the hammer end of that spike with his hand so that the shiny glint of steel disappeared.
If I was still a minister, I would have had a notebook full of sermon ideas and illustrations after leaving that mine. Instead, my mind is reeling on how to bring this type of Americana education into the sterilized standards based classrooms our kids endure most days.
Just a few more interesting facts for you:
- A mine shaft was considered profitable if you could find 40 ounces of silver ore for every ton of rock removed.
- The average miner earned around $3 a day.
- Kids started working in the mines at the age of 8 to 10. Most of the younger children were “runners” because they could get through the mine shaft quickly without having to bend over for low ceilings.
- When dynamite began to be used it had to be heated before it was taken into the mine. Dynamite won’t work under 54 degrees, and the mine is a pretty constant 40 degrees year round. A container was developed to hold a couple dozen sticks of dynamite horizontally, each nested in its own tube. A container underneath was filled with hot water and a couple of candles were lit under that to keep the water warm as one of those 8 year old children would run the container as far into the mine as needed to blast away a new section of rock.
- Because of the ore dust in the air, early miners had a life expectancy of around 35 years.
- As the ore was processed, crushed, separated by size, re-crushed, and the silver finally separated, the ore that was to be refined would drop into a “jig” at the bottom of the track. When it was full, the men would cry, “The jig is up!”
- If a man was trapped in the mine from a ceiling collapse (and sometimes entire slabs of rock would separate), many times the others would be able to remove the rubble by hand to find him. One of Walter’s uncles was just such a man. The rubble was too heavy for hand digging, so someone started swinging a pick into the rubble to break it up for removal. One swing of the pick grazed the man’s ear and came terribly close to taking his head off. Another swing hit him in the leg. As the man was slowly uncovered, he cried with others before him had cried in such circumstances, “Stop picking on me!”
We came away from this day with a much deeper understanding of the sacrifices men and women have made in this country in our attempt to make this a great country. What a wonderful, awe-inspiring tour.
Thank you, ISTE, for making this part of your tour offerings. And thank you, Walter, for sharing at least part of the stories in your head with the rest of us. Your laughter is still telling me there’s more I would love to know.