Re: Monday answer
Answer: Comstock mine, Mount Davidson, Virginia City, Nevada.
The Sago disaster led to the question. The Comstock was the richest mine in the country where each parcel of gray clinging, sticky dirt of the original assay equaling one ton (approximately a 2 � foot cube) was valued at $3876 (1860) or very close to $56,000 in today�s dollars on the consumer price index scale. The sticky dirt was silver and was clogging up the search for gold so bad that the owners including Comstock, Penrod, O�Riley, and McLaughlin, took it to an assayer to find out what was in it and how to best get rid of the stuff�which they had thrown away to such an extent that the pile was getting too large and difficult to work around.
Answers to the hints are that the lower levels of the mine reached temperatures of 160 degrees (five degrees F increase for every 100 feet of depth) and the miners worked 15 minutes on and forty minutes off. Some of the deaths in the mine were the result of a miner falling into water that was in the 150F range. If a vein was struck the mine owners �quarantined� the miners in the mine until the claims were filed. Skull caps were to keep the sweat out of the eyes and the dust from collecting in the hair. Operating quarters were so close that a brim on the hat got in the way.
The Comstock built San Francisco but the link to the cable cars is that Andrew Hallidie provided the cable to raise and lower miners into the mine. It was the same type of cable used on the famous cable cars. Rope cable in the heat and moisture couldn't be trusted for even one trip. Many times cages fell 500 feet without a stop when the rope snapped.
All that lumber (excluding the cord wood) was used for square sets. Invented by Phillip Deidesheimer. These were mortised and tenoned wood frames (cubes)that made the mines safer. Each square set was linked to another and stacked on one another. From an idea of a honeycomb the idea spread and was adopted all over the world. Not a man was lost using square sets owing to cave ins.
The quotes were from Dan DeQuille �the Big Bonanza�.
Miners worked 8 hour shifts, five day weeks for $4.00 a day.
Note: Some prominent Chinese families in San Francisco got their start doing laundry and collecting firewood for the miners. When the mines finally flooded out they had a nest egg much better than many of the miners.
All that lumber is now flooded. It should be recoverable but to take away the sets are to collapse the mine.
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