Sitting all alone up there it seems out-of-place and perhaps even lost. But there it was, a concrete footing smack dab in the center of the Baltic No. 2′s massive poor rock pile. Why it was up here we weren’t exactly sure, it was the first time we found anything atop a poor rock pile besides poor rock. Made of concrete, it was topped by a iron eye-loop along with a pair of holes on its shaft facing side. It looked to be a tie down of sorts, or perhaps a footing for a trestle or pulley stand. Either way its placement atop a rock pile was odd.
The only clue we had was the fact that the Copper Range branch line that served the mine made its way between this rock pile and the shaft house to the No.2 next door. Currently the rock pile borders the old CR right-of-way, which might have been a problem when the old railroad was still running. Its possible that this concrete footing was used to support some type of tramway that allowed the poor rock from the No.2 to be transported over this rock pile and dumped over its other side. This way the pile wouldn’t shift westward into the CR right-of-way but would instead carry itself eastward and out of the way.
Of course it could have been used for a variety of other purposes. Perhaps someone out there has a better idea then I….
Could it be a base for some sort of conveyor system? To carry the poor rock to the top of the pile? I’d hate to be the guy that had to carry all that poor rock to the top of that massive pile!
A conveyor system back then was two rails with a small wood or steel cart full of rock pushed by a man or maybe pulled by cable and dumped.
But here is a Baltic Mine photo, if you get the largest version, you can really zoom in, in fact if you do zoom in next to the wood trestle next to the mine, you can see a guy pushing a dump cart back to the main trestle.
I don’t know the relation of the cement foundation to the old mine, but my guess it had something to do with the trestle between shafts.
This photo is around 1922
http://libraryphoto.cr.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/show_picture.cgi?ID=ID. Butler, B.S. 189
The trestle Idea made sense for me too. Its interesting that there are four individual piles sitting there between the No. 2 and No. 3 shafts. (basically on top of the old No.1) There must of been some tram system to carry the rock around to the individual piles, which this guy could of been part of. But looking at it makes me believe it was some type of tie down, but for what I don’t know. (That iron look sticking out the top is odd)
BTW Gordy that link doesn’t seem to be working, at least not for me.
I would guess that its an anchor point for a snatch block, they probably used a tugger at some point to replace the human in the tram system…
I’ll never understand why a link can change from when you copy and paste, but we can try this one.
http://libraryphoto.cr.usgs.gov/htmllib/btch267/btch267j/btch267z/bbs00189.jpg
And see if this one will also work
http://libraryphoto.cr.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/search.cgi?free_form=af;search_mode=noPunct;start=200
Ok both of thos work, the lower one gives all the photos available, the Baltic is the 2nd photo
Thanks to Gordy for the photo links. I really like this shot from on top of the poor rock pile…