The rain seemed to have continued overnight, as did the cooler temperatures. It was around 10°C with low overcast at wake-up time. Today is the last day here, despite the weather of the last couple of days the only thing we hadn’t done was a trip to the Wallace silver mine. Given it doesn’t (shouldn’t) rain underground, we headed out mid morning to Wallace about 20 miles east of here.
The tour started in downtown Wallace on an open trolley car that took us to the mine a couple of miles away, at about 8°C now, and continuing rain it was a chilly journey. It turns out that the local area is the largest producer of silver in the world! There are a number of mines in the area, employing around 2500 miners. The silver was discovered back in the 1850’s.
The mine we visited was first started around 1890, but after a number of years digging no silver was found, so it was closed down. It was opened up again around 1960 when a large company took over and dug down a few hundred feet deeper, still no silver. They gave up and the mine was closed again. A mine about 5 miles away dug down to about 5,000 ft. and ran a number of tunnels out. On of these tunnels stretched out under the Wallace mine, where they stuck large deposits of silver together with lead copper and zinc. They had the right location but the wrong depth!
The mine was reopened in the 1980’s and served a class room for high school students. The mining companies were having problems recruiting new miners so a ‘mining’ course was offered to grade 12 students. Successful graduates were guaranteed a job in the industry if they wanted one.
Given the lousy weather we were the only ones on the tour.
We entered the mine via a horizontal tunnel bored into the side of a hill.
One of the first things we saw was the various methods used to stop the roof of the tunnel either collapsing or fracturing. This was achieved by driving long steel rods into the rock, the rods could then be twisted so that their diameter increased (think 12 ft. long wall anchors). These rods were either used on their own or as anchor points for strapping. This strengthening is particularly important here as the mine lies close to four fault lines, and the blasting has been known to trigger small seismic events.
To me this tour was unique, as the tour guide was a miner, and there was working equipment in the mine that he demonstrated. All the equipment in the mine is air operated. Their 12” diameter air hoses operating at over 100PSI put my ½ hose on the air compressor at home to shame, as did the noise generated by these machines compared to the tools I use!
The picture of the miner operating the air drill is a little blurred, I blame it on the noise and vibration caused by the drilling, it was insane.
One of the key indicators to the presence of silver is veins of white quartz.
After the mine tour we had planned a tour of Wallace, as it had some interesting old buildings, unfortunately the weather was not going to cooperate, I got a couple of pictures on the trip back to downtown with a general view,
and a view of the old railway station.
After lunch, and a WiFi fix we headed back to the trailer. As we headed west the rain eased a little, so back at the trailer I prepared it for another early morning departure. The truck is hooked up, sewer disconnected etc., all that needs doing is disconnection of water and hydro.
Next stop is a visit with Yogi and Boo-Boo