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 would not of required any steam for mechanical use (its machinery would have been powered by electricity) it would however require steam to heat the cheese vats along with the building itself. Somewhere within the massive complex must have been a boiler room where these steam would have been produced. Since the boilers would have to be placed near the smokestack there are two possibilities for its location – marked on the map above. Since our exploration of the room to the east of the stack turned up nothing, we now turned to the room on its west. A room protected by a large steel fire door.

Making our way through the door we found ourselves in a narrow two-story room with a partially collapsed ceiling. Besides the ceiling, the floor had also collapsed leaving us with only a small concrete ledge to stand on inside. A large amount of bricks and debris lay strewn out on the floor with very little obvious evidence of the rooms prior purpose. Our only clues were a large circular patch which was inlaid in the wall directly below the collapsed ceiling and a small rectangular opening above it.

These openings were mostly likely flue openings to the stack, which sits directly behind the wall in the photo. The large plugged hole probably was original to the building while it was in use for the mine – no doubt for a large battery of boilers needed for the hoists and compressors. The smaller opening was probably for the smaller boiler used by the cheese factory for heating.

The doorway into the boiler room is actually a double door – featuring a fire door on the left (east) and a normal opening to the right (west). Originally both doors must have opened into their own rooms, but the brick wall separating them had partially collapsed creating an opening between them. You can see the wall and the double doors in the photo above. The room behind the wall would be the boiler room, while the room in front of it was something else.

Sitting within the collapses opening in that brick wall I took this photo of the boiler room’s neighboring room. Interestingly the room was set several feet higher then both the boiler room or the cheese room beyond. A small stairway led up to this split level while an opening below the floor revealed a basement level.

Peering down into the basement we could make out a large amount of debris – some of it appearing to be the remains of shelving. Perhaps this lower level was also used to age the cheese, placed on the shelves that sit in shards today.

At the top of the short flight of stairs leading up to the split level we quickly came across another set of stairs – this one leading down into that basement level. The stairs were gone, but the steel runners and a single railing post betrayed its former identity.

Next to the stairs was a yet another small room. This one featured a small window on its far end and a large pipe along its wall. A series of small windows on its east wall looked out over the room beyond. (Click on the image to view a panoramic)

To the right (north) the room was open to the Cheese room beyond, providing a grand view of the ruins and the rusted cars within it.

And straight ahead of the stairs were a narrow hallway leading off to yet another room beyond. We moved on…

NOTICE: The Stella Cheese Factory ruins are on private property and are NOT open to the public. Please keep out!