Kennedy Mine - III

Here you can see the bones of the building that housed the stamp mills and, just barely there in the distance, the building that houses the #4 lifting wheel. The smokey air obscures much still after over a month of fires.

Near the center of the summ is a sign with directions and distances to various mines in the US. Two of them we've visited this summer: Bodie and the Empire Mine. One is well known to those of us in physics: the Homestake mine.

Inside the Change House is a display of a large chunk of quartz. On it is a small sign that claims that if you formed all the gold mined here into one nugget, this would be the size of it. If you zoom in, you can probably read it.

This is called the change house because this is where the miners changes clothes at the beginning and end of each shift. On one end of the building are these metal baskets in which the men put their belongings and from which they hung their clothes. At the other end of the building were the showers. This meant they had to walk naked across the building so they could be inspected for any gold they might be trying to walk away with.

We were also able to see a short video of the mine prepared in the 1920's most likely to advertise the place to investors. One of the things we saw in the video were the men being raised to the surface by the cable winch at the head frame.

In a display created when covid prevented people from visiting the mine (we choose not the go underground), one of the parts shown is the metal car that lifted the men out. What you see below is the metal floor and the supports on the sides. I have placed one of my sandals on it for scale. Into the space provided, nine miners were packed. Clearly they were small than most of us. In addition, boards were placed across the top of the car and another 9 were standing on top.Thus, 18 men were raised/lowered on each trip of the lift. Pretty cozy, I'd say.