I have done several posts here on CCE about a copper mine’s biological needs, namely a hunger for large quantities of coal and a thirst for an almost equal amount of water. This was due to a mines reliance on steam power for all the heavy lifting, a power source …

Looking down the Mineral Range towards Woodside After such a long (and exhausting) long form exploration at Baltic and the Stella Cheese Factory, I figured I’d take a break and throw up some short subjects for a few days. Today we take a trip back north, to the town of …

The Stella Cheese Factory? Before leaving the Stella Cheese Factory behind for good, there’s still one last mystery that I feel the need to explore. It has been said that when Stella moved into Baltic it made the decision to take advantage of the already existing infrastructure that the mine …

Now that our exploration of the Stella Cheese Factory is complete, its time to take a step back and look at all that we have discovered. After exploring nearly a dozen rooms of these vast ruins I feel I can make an educated guess on just how the building was …

Moving down the hallway past the stairs down to the basement we entered yet another room in the vast ruins we call the Stella Cheese Factory. This one featured a series a set of windows on its south wall and a series of openings along its west, one of which …

As with any smokestack, the Stella Cheese Factory’s stack was required to draw combustion gases up and out of the building. In the case of mine buildings, this combustion was used heat a boiler in the production of steam to feed the mine’s various steam engines. While the Stella plant …

Heading west out of the collection of vat rooms we had been exploring we pass under a gabled wall of sandstone which looks to have once been a mine building. Passing through the doorway we immediately noticed a change in building materials – and found ourselves in a very familiar …

Making our way up the stairs from the lower level upwards we find ourselves walking up into the bright sunshine of day – as the room we entered was missing its roof. Just like the rooms below, this one also featured a collection of concrete tubs. But unlike the lower …

The cheese making process can be broken down into four basic steps: curdling, drying, pressing, and ripening. With the addition of specific bacteria and a natural enzyme found in cow’s stomachs called rennin, milk is allowed to curdle in large vats. During the curdling process the milk separates into a …

When we had first stumbled across the vast complex of ruins we weren’t sure what we had discovered – but had assumed it was connected with the Baltic Mine in some manner due to its location. (check out our first exploration of the ruins HERE) It sure appeared to come …