Page prepared byYves Barbero
Computer Consultant
Member, National Writers Union,
Wind has increased, clouds hanging over the mountains, sun now behind the
clouds and temperature falling towards freezing.
As last Thur's trip with friend Fred left such a different sort of
remembrance than any other adventure, plans are underway on making the same
excursion this next Thursday. The only difference will be that Polly will
go along for this great adventure into history.
Something right out of the "X-Files" when entering this place.
Fred and I were stopped on a paved road by a large, heavy, locked steel
gate, with a sign warning, "trespassers and every other person not
permitted beyond this point." Leaving the vehicle near, we walked around
the gate and further along the road. About the equivalent of a city block
or two, down a gentle curve, along one side of the canyon. Then, there are
all these buildings from another era before our eyes.
At first glance you would believe that the inhabitants are indoors, away
from the chilling, unfriendly wind and that our approach will be soon
recognized and challenged. But, a few yards further into this settlement
the lack of normal human maintenance can be observed. Frayed curtains
caught on broken widow pains of small houses, rusted scrap metal laying
about in pools of shallow liquids of dark and dirty unknown origins. The
cold draft actually moans and whistles through the tall iron sheave
supports of the large hoists. The hoist motor-room has one massive door,
hanging, twisted, on a single hinge as if ready to leave the building and
expire on the earth rather then fight a losing battle by remaining upright.
It was this opening and the dark interior which first grabbed my attention
and beckoned me inside to stare at this elderly silent machine. A glass
enclosed control room stood equal-distant between the two large drums of
this hoist.
Walking upstairs, pulling open the closed door into the control room, I
stared at history. An amp meter, with a maximum reading for 500 marked
with a red line was adjoining a volt meter with a mark at 440, the maximum
numbering also reading to 500.
Indicating levels for the position of the two cars underground were
painted on two separate large discs with an arrows pointing at zero and
linked by chains to the two large drums. One motor controlled both drums
via separate clutches. Hoist cable was about an inch and a quarter in
diameter. A signal bell was bolted to each side-wall of the control room.
The control wiring appeared frayed as if some rodent had been industriously
employed.
The absence of humans was overpowering. The sounds of work could be
perceived whenever the arctic blast outside dropped to a whimper inside
this steel building. Then I could hear the whine of the large motor, the
roar of the mill and the sounds of welding and hammering of metal and
warning bells clanging.
What happened to all those people who worked so hard digging in the earth
and building this place? How many years were humans engaged in scratching a
living from inside of these low mountains? Who supplied the funds for the
original equipment and labor?
I looked at the switch gear for the hoist. Each relay was about a foot
tall and located inside metal cabinets. Large banks of cast iron resistors
were affixed to the building walls. The wiring had lost eighty percent of
its insulation.
I stepped outside again, into the bright sunlight, away from the darkness
of history which could be unpleasant and stared at Interstate 10, seen
twenty miles away and identified by the reflecting sunlight from moving
trucks. When on that road these buildings could not be seen. We were in
another world.
Walking to the next large structure it was easy to see that a gaping hole
in one side was man made. Inside, alternating shadows showed large concrete
foundations for absent machinery and another huge AC motor still anchored
to firm pillars. My friend said this is where Two Ball-Mills operated. A
revolving machine like a clothes dryer with iron balls inside that would
fall, lift and again fall, crushing rock, crumbling it to a powder, which
could later have the minerals separated by floatation. That is, float the
various minerals desired with the use of chemicals.
The floor was spotted with dark pools of ugly liquids which apparently
escaped from the rusting flotation machines. An unusual odor of danger
prevailed. The floor was covered with rust and sharp edges of metal between
the pools. A step on a board must be made carefully as it could be floating
on a foot of this terrible fluid or concealing some other undesired object
or pitfall. It was impossible to determine where solid and liquid differed
in the suspicion created by the bright sunlight and the contrasting deep
and dark shadows accompanied by the sounds generated by freezing air
motions that never seemed to cease, only fluctuate in intensity.
The winds created strange and awful sounds as if some frightful creature
was near at hand, around a dark corner or on the opposite side of a closed
door. We disturbed a bat and out it flew by my face to another place of
hiding.
I pushed open a closed door to see a room filled with oils, chemicals, and
various other unlabeled containers of fluids or fine particles. First Aid
and emergency safety signs adorned one wall, on the opposite a shower head
attached to a rather large pipe. Obviously, some powerful chemicals were
utilized in this room. I left this room and gently closed the door behind.
Walking into another large building it was easy to determine that here was
a repair shop as miniature rail tracks were embedded in the concrete floor.
Welding rods were segregated by pigeon-hole boxes affixed to one wall.
Another corner had a vice the size of a single bed bolted to the floor. A
welding rod of one half inch in diameter lay on the vice. What giants could
utilize such monstrous machines?
It was apparent that range cattle had bedded inside this building as their
droppings and odor prevailed. Some straw lay about, as if a rancher had
utilized the shop as a barn. All the glass windows were in place. Only the
door by which I had came in remained open, but a strong unfriendly
cheerless wind would touch my exposed neck, sending unfamiliar chills down
my spine.
Time-tickets were stacked in the open drawer of a desk. A calendar from the
forties tacked to one wall with half of the months missing. A newspaper
from the fifties lay on a work bench. A Time magazine from 1949 was stiff
and brittle with the death of the paper. An injured coffee cup without
handle occupied one corner of the desk. Two wooden pencil stubs without
points lay adjoining the broken cup. I pulled another desk drawer open to
expose an old technical description for motor maintenance, half digested
and piled in one corner, the obvious nest of a mouse family. As this was
the only visible signs of living creatures about, I carefully closed this
drawer and did not open others.
A glance at my watch indicated we were already snooping in these three of
twenty buildings for a couple hours. The wind had increasingly made us
uncomfortable. We decided to leave, rather then drive on desert highway
after sundown. We commenced walking past the managers home, some staff
houses, up the road towards our vehicle. The wind elevated the sound
through the iron of the hoist frame and sang a song of temptation, asking
for delay.
Another mine (called the Miser's Chest) lays around the shoulder of the
mountain. At the top of this mountain is a stone breastwork, probably
constructed by Indians in their innumerable wars. All waits for our next
visit.
And that visit should be soon.
Another adventure in time. When we arrived at the property a large heavy
metal gate was unlocked and partially open. Rather then parking and
walking down the canyon we drove in. The major buildings came in view and
Polly remarked, "What a surprise!" The sight of eighteen buildings in this
extraordinary location did not create awe at first sight.
I moved the vehicle to the front of the main hoist building. Fred with
Polly got out of the van and I returned it up the hill and parked it
outside the open gate, thus, preventing somebody from closing and locking
the vehicle within the mining property.
Hurried down the hill to Polly who was standing in the shadow of the open
door- way of the hoist house. Looking at her face half covered by a scarf,
her eyes caught mine and all I could hear above the freezing wind was, "Wow!"
Fred had disappeared to his own recollections and was walking towards
another unconventional building.
Polly did not have to point or express interest further above the
undesirable music of the sounds emitting from the various loose pieces of
metal that composed the structure itself. One continuous effect of
reverberation and repercussion of metallic sounds, metal against metal,
accompanied by the clapping of various wood pieces, tapping, tapping,
tapping, haunting ones memory for time past.
Her wide eyes left my face and gazed upwards towards the inside sources of
this untuned orchestra, the loose corrugated, galvanized iron sheets of the
roof and walls lifting twisting, slapping, and opposing one another,
knocking against steel beams with the musical conductor being nature alone,
playing strange classical harmony of an attempt to eliminate all evidence
of human labor. At the same instant, windows high in the building walls,
some already broken and shattered, moved and swung dangerously above on
frail hinges as new air currents disturbed the proper stable positions of
the frames. It was apparent that at any moment portions of window glass
could tumble onto our heads with devastating results as broken pieces were
already scattered about the debris strewn floor.
The sounds increased with horizontal driven snow flakes flying into the
building through the myriad openings caused by the winds temperament. With
a pause in intensity, light exposed snowflakes were quickly converted to
moisture and visibly falling through the airborne dust already disturbed
and lifted by the fresh winds entering through other hidden openings. This
combination of dust and moisture now resettled on the grime coated hoist
machinery giving reason for the rust-cover speedily returning metal to
earth. We were standing in a house of magic, shivering from the intense
cold with hearing glutted because of these unaccustomed sounds.
Opening the hoist controller and hollering above the winds at Polly to come
along and examine this antique it was learned that she could not hear a
word I had shouted. So great was the cacophony caused by natural order
working against man's creation. Shrieks, squeaks, moans, percussion,
clapping, sizzling, crepitation, howling, stunned the ears. I climbed a
stairway and opened a door into the operators station with controls,
meters, gages, and carefully covered soft seat. One glass pane of the
three sided glass room had been removed by forces unknown.
Stuck my head through this unexplained opening to look above the hoist
machinery and discovered Polly had fled outside where the immense sounds of
the building interior could be separated from the wind and its howling and
whistling around and over exterior corners of the various structures. I too
then walked carefully down the stairs, stepping cautiously over the
discarded machinery, spilled lubricants, and soiled pieces of cloth,
towards the exterior.
Standing outdoors we could recognized that inside was a metal echo chamber
of giant proportions, increasing the reverberations to frightening
magnitudes. Outside it was only the wind, with some human voices long dead,
calling, calling.
The clicking noises from ghostly wind driven skeletons composed of broken
hinges holding shattered wooden doors or window frames surrounded us
whenever there was the least reduction of air velocity. A series of louder
tapping indicated another strong gust of air and the demoniacal orchestra
increased its tuning.
Polly shouted, "Where is everybody?" Did she expect an answer? We were
standing in a modern ghost town and probably an ecological disaster. Both
shivered in synchronous with the wind driven malicious discord rapidly on
the increase.
Peeked through windows of the main office building and noticed neat filing
cabinets across one wall, an Apple Computer covered with an even layer of
dust, a chair pushed back from a wooden desk, a roll of toilet paper barely
visible through an open interior doorway, and weather-stripping around
inside of windows where visible. The doors were locked as were two leading
into a nearby managers residence.
In the house of the mine manager, we gazed through a window into a kitchen
and spotted washed plates, cups, and silverware, resting in a dish rack
inside, above a sink. All appeared as if humans had only recently left the
premises except that a smooth coating of dust indicated otherwise.
An adjoining automobile garage was held to the earth by two 5/8 inch steel
cables which ran from concrete foundation up the walls and over the trusses
and down the opposite side, terminating in large iron sockets buried in the
concrete slab. One cable was at each end of the single car garage,
affirming the magnitude of the wind in the area.
Turning a door knob into another small, sand-blasted, wooden building with
sheet metal roof revealed a dozen or more containers burst open and
chemicals spilled over a rotten wood floor. A large wooden shelf had broken
away from the supporting wall and smashed bottles, jars, cartons, and cans
onto the floor. A suitcase lay open and naked upon a collapsed iron spring
bed along the opposite wall below a broken window. A small pile of tiny
shredded cloth material pieces was carefully prepared in one corner of the
suitcase where some little creature had established residence. How any
mammal could escape or enter across this semi-solid collection of mixed
chemicals is beyond comprehension. There was no odor as an upper part of
two walls had already attempted to self-destruct and the wind entered and
exhausted fiercely.
Through an opening between the wall and the roof I could see the side of
the hill this ex-house had been constructed upon. Rushing down the slope
towards me was a large black object, three or four feet in diameter,
bouncing to the ground and then airborne again, pieces bursting from the
edges, and all flying directly towards this building. I flinched in
anticipation of an avalanche of cascading rock caused by wind. The object
lifted off the ground, struck the edge of the trembling house and skidded
upwards to the ridge of the roof overhead, emitting loud sounds of
scratching and then slid down the opposite side with a screech and rattle
against the metal roof where it dropped off and became visible again
through a fractured window. A large thick tumble-weed had caused my concern.
I retreated, pulled the door shut, and gazed towards an extremely flat bare
area about a quarter of a mile distant. My older friend had told me this
was a portion of the tailing-pond and the "dust raising from that region
would continue for a thousand years and not one growth of nature could
advance there."
Polly asked, "How is it different then when you were here Fred?"
His reply was, "It was then always neat and orderly. Now it is all trashed"
He wanted nothing to do with this failing of human kind as this did not
represent his opinion of mining, but only of human failing.
The cold attacked in force and we decided to locate refuge, away from
history and ghosts, away from adventure. We headed to the vehicle and hot
chocolate.
Go to The People's Elevator
Tom Grosch can be reached at groscht@theriver.com
Page prepared by
Yves Barbero
Computer Consultant
Member, National Writers Union,