LODGEPOLE MINE & HEADFRAME
Our mining area is named after the Lodgepole Mine in the mining district of High Grade in the Warner Mountains high above Fort Bidwell, CA. The display includes a headframe, horizontal mine shafts, an incline shaft, windlass displays, and miscellaneous mining memorabilia gathered over the last 50 years throughout the West.
Commonly called a gallows (note the resemblance), the head frame consists of the wheel, timbers, & braces necessary to support the weight of the cable and miners, or a loaded ore car, being hoisted to the surface of the mine. In deeper mines, the enormous weight of loaded ore cars, plus the heavy cable necessary to reach the bottom of the shaft, ruled out smaller frames such as this one and led to the development of huge metal head frames. Many of the larger mine shafts were over a mile deep.
The style of ore car displayed in our incline mine shaft is called an ore skip. Wheels on the underside of the skip permitted easy travel in incline shafts. Ore skips were designed to enter the ground at an angle so the mine shaft could follow the vein of ore. This ore skip was used at a mine in Butte, Montana. Both ore and men were transported in this skip.
In the early days of the California Gold Rush most buildings were made of wood. After many devastating fires (including Virginia City, NV, and Sacramento, CA) the lessons were finally learned and more and more buildings in the commercial and residential areas were made of brick and stone. Fire doors were built by local foundries or blacksmiths and installed on the outside of doors and windows. If a fire broke out, all the iron fire doors were closed, preventing the fire from spreading from building to building.
In small mining operations, a hand cranked windlass was built over vertical mine shafts up to 100 feet deep. The windlass was turned by hand and lowered miners and supplies into the mine shaft. It was then used to lift the gold bearing ore from the bottom of the mine.
Some vertical mine shafts used an iron winch with a steel cable to raise and lower the ore buckets.
