As is the case with any copper mine top billing often goes to the stars of the show – the hoist and the shaft. But a mine’s minor players also deserve their due, since they too have had a role in the final production. Two important members of this supporting cast are the boiler and compressor buildings, the subjects of our post today. But just as you often have to sit through an entire movie to discover who played the janitor, you also have to do some serious bush-whacking to find the ruins of these buildings which often sit far from the mine’s stars.

According to the Copper Handbook from 1909 the No. 2 surface plant at Baltic consisted of “a boiler house with two 250 h.p. Stirling boilers” along with a “compressor house with Nordberg air compressor reducing 4,000′ of free air per minute to a pressure of 70 lbs. per square inch”. Lucky for us we had quickly discovered the first of these buildings by simply following the half-buried utility trenches from the nearby hoist.

While also steam driven like their more illustrious brethren, the engine driving a mine’s compressor is often smaller and lighter then that serving the hoist. Also, without the need to provide room for a cable drum, the foundation for such an engine has less significant footprint as well. The remains of the Baltic’s No. 2 compressor engine can be seen above – laying low to the ground and easily hidden by the brush.

It was here along the Compressor House remains that we discovered the half-covered tunnel, which thanks to Jay W.’s fearless exploration we now know leads to the building’s basement. But just a few steps away from that opening the compressor house drops off a short concrete wall which marks a boundary between it and the neighboring boiler house.

While boiler houses are often hard to discern from the background noise, smokestack bases are another thing altogether. If it weren’t for this fine specimen at the No. 2, we would have assumed that the rest of the surrounding ruins belonged to the compressor house. Instead we can safely assume that they in fact belong to the boiler house.

Here’s a closer look at the stack base. Originally a steel stack would have been attached to the top of this structure, bolted down using a steel flange. It’s interesting that the Baltic seems to have used steel stack / concrete base combinations while the neighboring Trimountain relied on a free-standing concrete specimen.

Here’s a look at what this stack might have looked like when it was still intact. This stack is labeled simply as a Baltic stack in the archives and at first I thought this might belong to the No. 2 since the concrete base looks very similar. However, the layout and position of the surrounding buildings are all wrong for that to be the case, and I would guess instead that this is in fact from the No. 4 Boiler house.

Dropping down from the compressor building into the basement of the old boiler house we found ourselves surrounded by a high concrete wall. Normally a boiler house would have a very modest foundation wall, but this one was much more involved. I would suspect that its abnormal size was due to the very rugged and hilly topography up here along the slopes of six-mile hill.

The walls along the old boiler foundation was large, including this very thick portion of the wall that jutted out a quarter of the way into the building. I almost think that we might be looking at the junction of a newer addition to the structure – taking the difference in concrete smoothness into account. That would also explain the insane thickness of this wall (almost two feet).

Another oddity along the boiler house’s perimeter is the use of what appears to be concrete blocks along part of the wall. We hardly ever come across concrete block in a mine building, I would guess this section was damaged in some way and had to be repaired. Or it was yet another later addition to the building.

Working our way back to the shared wall along the compressor house we could make out openings for various utilities. The large opening to the right leads to that half-covered tunnel / basement from our last post. To the left is a opening stuffed with a variety of iron pipes.

Here’s a closer look at the pipe cluster. I’m not sure what they are for, except that at least one of them should be the water line providing the boilers with water. As for the rest, perhaps someone else might have some ideas. For now we move along…

Our first confirmed boiler house ruin was at North Kearsarge No. 1, where it stood heavily buried in the brush along the road. After that we began to notice more, all sharing the same “trenched” floor plan. A few of our more notable finds were at North Kearsarge No. 3, at Ahmeek No. 2 as well as at Osceola No. 3. This foundation marks a departure from this tried and true design we have come to expect.