After four years of exploring the Copper Country the moments where I find something that truly amazes me are starting to become scarce. Once you’ve seen a couple dozen rockhouse remains you’re not exactly excited by the 25th one. But in those waning moments of light at the Franklin Jr. it was a massive free-standing wall rising up through the trees that truly took my breath away – a rare event to be sure. But don’t just take my word for it, have a look for yourself…

Whatever it was, the rock wall towering above us was definitely massive. Built out of the same red conglomerate rock as was everything else at the Franklin Jr., this particular structure looked to be part of a wall from an old building. Its position along the east end of the boiler house seemed to suggest that it belonged to that building, but a lack of windows or openings along its breadth seemed odd.

Making our way around the wall we notice that it was actually in the shape of an inverted “L”, some 12 feet deep and a couple dozen feet in length. Running along its edge was a groove, which looked to have once held the end of a wood-framed wall (the boiler house perhaps?)

Inside the “L” the wall was embellished with a series of iron “strips” running vertically up its surface. These “strips” could also of been steel beams set into the rock wall itself, but we couldn’t be sure.

Looking up towards the top of those “strips” we find what looked like some type of bracket. It looked as if the wall might not of been a wall at all, but perhaps a pedestal on top of which something else was attached. Continuing north from the wall would take us to a our answer….

It was there that we found the twisted remains of a steal beam, perfectly in line with our wall. This beam most likely belonged to a trestle, more specifically the coal trestle which fed into the boiler house.

Here’s another shot of the beam in question, this one showing its placement at the corner of a rock rubble foundation wall. This wall’s location would correspond to the boiler house’s north-east corner – exactly where the coal trestle entered the building.

To further back up our theory that the wall was part of the boiler house’s coal trestle was the presence of this earthen approach ramp sitting just north of the boiler house foundation. Like the twisted trestle beam, it too was also in line with the “L” shaped wall in question.

Here’s a plan view of the boiler house complex, with the “L” shaped wall, steel beam, and earthen approach all superimposed over it. Looking at this there’s no doubt that the wall in question was part of the boiler house, specifically the back wall of the structures coal bins. The old coal trestle would have ran up the approach ramp over the beam and along the top of the “L” shaped wall. Inside the wall would have sat the coal bins, now long since destroyed.

With one mystery solved, however, another raises its ambiguous head. Attached to the south end of that coal trestle wall was this interesting specimen. It appears to be a foundation wall for some type of building, one that happened to have been attached to the end of the trestle. At first I thought this was possibly the coal bins themselves, with those window openings actually being coal loading doors. But with closer inspection I now doubt that was the case.

Turns out this particular building is in fact marked on the old Sanborn maps of this surface plant (you can also see it on my drawing from above). Though the maps don’t reveal the structure’s purpose, its position outside of the boiler room makes its identity as a coal bin suspect. It had to have some other purpose.

Whatever that purpose might have been, the foundation’s concrete construction reveals it to be a more recent addition to the boiler complex. The inclusion of windows makes me think it might have had some human purpose, and wasn’t just a storage building or equipment room. But is placement directly under the coal trestle would limit its height, and the trestle structure itself would take up a great deal of space in which the building could occupy.

Here’s another look at the complete structure, “L” shaped wall and all. The trestle would have run along the top of both, ending at some point near the end of the concrete building. Its obvious from this drawing that the concrete wall was a later addition, added after the coal bins were already in place. Without any connection to the boiler house directly, I would guess that this building was not directly related to it, but perhaps served some type of auxiliary purpose. Perhaps we’ll never know.

For now the light had now completely gone, and our exploration of the Franklin Jr. complex had to come to a close. Hoping not to fall into an abandoned mine shaft, we took the long dark road back to our vehicles.