Interesting post. Is this ruin in the line of houses along the main highway near Delaware or on a sideroad?

I’ve often wondered how much stuff got left underground because it was too expensive to haul it out. And then of course the mines filled with water and it was out of reach.

Probably a correct assumption as to how this boiler was saved from the scrappers. Did you see any old radiators about? Maybe the scrappers took them but failed to look in the basement!

One note about the scrapping is that athe iron or steel parts are there but there would have been brass and copper parts that are not. Looks like some of the scrappers did want the red metal. In photo 2, the 3 holes on the right are for the tri-cocks, used to determine the water level. When the water level in a boiler goes below the crown or top sheet inside the the firebox, bad things happen. The holes on the boiler front on the left side may be for a waterglass, also to check the level. Photo 6 shows a manway opening that is used during maintenance and for the initial water filling. The pictures of the steam dome, photos 7 and 8, show two openings on top. One is probably for steam for heating and the other is for a safety valve. The safety valve opens when the pressure in the boiler gets too high. If this does not happen, bad things do. Photo 9 looks like part of a vacuum breaker. When the steam and/or hot water in the heat pipes cool down, a vacuum develops and the pipes in the house don’t like that. One question is the location of the water pump or injector inlet to the boiler. The tri-cocks and water glass tell you how much water you have in the boiler and a gauge tells you how much pressure. Having a way to put more water in the boiler, and maybe to cool it down, is very important.

well, maybe it was just small picking compared to the rest of the metal laying around.

Photo #5 appears to have some preformed asbestos insulation in the base of the cavity (the white stuff). In the event that anyone finds this kind of stuff in a house or structure – leave it alone. If left undisturbed, it is relatively harmless, even in its severely damaged condition. Be careful that none of this material comes home or goes in your car on your shoes as well. Cool post!

Herb,
Probably about 90% of the equipment in the copper country was left underground. Too expensive to hoist, and most of the time the work stopages were thought to be temporary.

Maybe someday it will be of archeological value to dewater a mine and pull out some of the items, the equipment is probably perfectly preserved. Great place to toss a time capsule!

In one of the copper country books — can’t recall which — tells of a Michigan Tech fraternity that back in the 1960s or so salvaged a piece of steam equipment from one of the mines. Don’t recall the mine but I’ll look it up. It was a big task and the machinery was put on display somewhere up there. Probably there still….

In a way the waterfilled mines with their contents of old mining equipment is something like a sunken shipwreck. Interesting to think about what might be in the vast underground caverns such as the Cliff Mine or Minesota Mine that had an extensive early history.

Cool to think about….

Herb — that was Sigma Rho. The steam engine is actually still on display (and reasonably well-kept) in front of their house in Chassell. Really! I believe that they found it while “just exploring some of the lower levels”. Their advisor called up C&H (who owned the land at the time), and C&H even sent over a guy to help them get it out — in the middle of winter. What a different world!

One version of the story is here: http://www.sigmarho.org/the_fraternity/house_and_grounds/mine_hoist/

It’s interesting that the shaft they used for access is the one covered by the Big Blue Bat Cage nowadays.

Here’s the story of the hoist recovery…
http://www.deltaforge.com/minehoist/

You just beat me to it Dave.

HaHA… I win!!

Although Jay’s link is a different page, and the details included are a bit different there. Both reads are neat. I still can’t imagine hauling out heavy steam equipment in the middle of winter. They even RE-laid track in the shaft to get it out!

I was actually looking for the link you posted.

You sure that thing is a boiler and not a German U-Boat laying in wait for one of our stone boats to pass by?

She’s not very water-tight for a U-boat, what with the big square opening on one end and that one short conning tower without a hatch on it. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sub with that many very tiny torpedo tubes!

It doesn’t take a very big torpedo to sink a stone boat.The old girl may have been overgunned with that many tubes.

Of course, this would be a 100+ year old U-Boat… they were primitive back then.

There is a WW1 U=Boat sunk in Lake Michigan…

http://www.atrecovery.com/Pages/GermanUBoat.htm

Hello again,

C&H bought the most of the property around the Delaware Mine circa 1900. The old superintendent’s (agent’s) house was used as a club house by the C&H Gun Club. They kept it up for hunting and fishing outings and it saw heavy use while the Keweenaw Central RR was in operation (1906-18). I suspect there was some sort of fee to keep it all legal but it was probably a nominal $1 per month or year. All part of the paternalism model “historians” find so evil. I suspect this use continued into the 1930’s and of course automobiles were the choice of transportation from Calumet. The house was was available to members for uses other than hunting as my maternal grandparents spent part of their honeymoon there. The house remained intact until the 1960’s when it burned down under suspicious circumstances. That is why the boiler survived.

Paul

Interestingly, there are photos over at the Cliff Mine blog of (apparently) a tube boiler similar to this one, buried deep in the debris of the #4 engine house.

That’s what’s going on at Adventure. They are finding old artifacts preserved in time as they de-water. They could probably pay for the work by selling artifacts if they wanted to. You could make good money selling old timbers. There’s an entire old-growth forest stored underwater across the CC!

I’ve seen documentaries on TV describing companies that are diving to recover sunken logs from lakes and rivers where logging companies used to float them from the cutting site to the sawmill. So in theory you could do the same with timbers from flooded mines. But what would be the effect of taking out the support structures? Wouldn’t you have stopes starting to collapse? I know if you have stopes near the surface that collapse you see subsidence on the surface, but if you took all the timber out of all the levels of (say) a 1000 foot deep mine, would you notice anything on the surface?

And second, any metallic artifacts recovered would need to be preserved or they would immediately start to rust and corrode. As the folk who raised the HL Hunley can tell you, it costs money to preserve metal that’s been underwater for 100 years or more. While I’m all for historic preservation, getting someone to pay for it can be a significant iseue.

Visions of that old movie “Paint Your Wagon” come to mind, especially the scene near the end when the tunnels collapse and the town caves in on itself.

The C&H and Tamarack Mines would be the big timber producers,not sure how many board feet per ton of timbers mined you would get.When the Atlantic Mines hanging wall gave way it made the RR tracks at the surface look like a snake.Hate to see the steets of Calumet look like that.But I doubt the EPA would ever allow those mines to be pumped out with all that methane containing corrosive heavy salt water being dumped into Lake Superior again.Before C&H claimed it just sank to the bottom of the lake.

I was always curious what they did under Calumet when they robbed the pillars. I’m talking about the end of life for the main C&H. Maybe they replaced those pillars with timber? I haven’t read of any sink holes in Calumet.

Now water is a better support than air. Surely some timbers in old mines have fallen down, so you have to wonder if cave-ins would happen in less stable mines just from de-watering. With the hoisting equipment gone, you also have the challenge of hauling the logs up.

But if you found a 300 year old maple tree, preserved for 100 years underwater, wouldn’t somebody pay for classic birds-eye pattern furniture?

I’m sure it would be possible to remove the wood supports from the old mines, you’d just have to find a substitute for the timbers after they were taken out. I.E., simple steel columbs? Or maybe only remove half the timbers from each level could be removed? Then you would refill it with poor rock after work’s completed on each level?

Hey, if its worth it to dive to the bottom of the Great Lakes and bring up old timbers, it would be worth it to go into mines and do the same. The problem is balancing the worth of the timbers with the need to comply with safety regulations, the EPA, and the structural principles of a mine.

Water is most likely acting to hold things up. The hydraulic pressure is helping hold rock in place. De-watering and then de-timbering would seem to be a perfect formula for collapse.

Actually the timbers may not be holding anything up in the C&H lode; they would shoot the timbers and let the hanging wall collapse when they robbed the pillars. When the hanging wall collapses, the abutment stress is reduced on the next mining horizon because the pressure above is relieved. Also timbers aren’t met to hold anything up, they are passive support (meaning the ground must deflect before they become effective) and also were used for work platforms. Now if they are taking weight you couldn’t remove them easily without being squashed like a bug!

The problem with dewatering is waters ability to loosen joint sets. Any naturally cemented joints can have their bond weakened by the water; also any un-cemented joints can build water behind them. If the water becomes trapped and you dewater you have a differential head which helps to work the rock loose, and then you have big problems.

We actually used to pull allot of timbers out of shafts before they were capped, especially the few that require dewatering, its beautiful timber!

On a side note, the EPA doesn’t have anything to do if your discharge point is above grade. The only permits you need are from the State of Michigan, but you would probably still need a treatment plant. I know way more than I want to on mine water discharge and the relationship between the EPA and mining companies!

Maybe you could install roof bolts and than pull the timbers on the retreating system.The jackpot would be if you did find some old growth Birdseye Maple.It’s up there.I was amazed that one of the old log cabins on the tour at Victoria has a Birdseye-Tiger Maple floor.Can’t even guess what that would cost today.

Thats what I think would have to happen, rok bolts and cable bolts and lots of them! But to be honest there probably isn’t much left for timber in the stopes, as it all would have crushed out and been shot out! (Especially when they pulled the shaft pillars!)

On a side note, the floors in my house (which was a 1870’s mine captain’s house in its first life) are about 60% Birds Eye. The family that owened it after the mining company was a weathly local family and built on to it several times, turns otu they put in the birds eye floors. Its all narrow slat, but its beautiful stuff that I wouldn’t blow that much money on installing!

Another rare find,birds eye maple flooring.At least two houses in copper country have it.Antiques Road Show appraisis birds eye cabinets at a premium.Wonder what they would think of a whole floor of it?$$$

No Doubt! I spoke with some of the guys doing the floor installation at our office, and he told me that there was an old home here in the MQT area, in a very wealthy area that had a Birds Eye Floor. He brought this company in to rip it up and put in marble tile. They tried to get him to leave it, and he said he didn’t like the look, so they destroyed it… Some people!

In my house we are getting ready to tear out the carpet in the living room and dining room… Its mapel underneath also, the same vintage as the upstairs so I am anxious to see if there is any birdseye downstairs as well!