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A pathless wilderness, wild, rugged. That was the Black Hills of South
Dakota in the early 1870s.
A hardy frontier far from the paths of civilization where fortune beckoned with a
glittering smile and life hung on the quickness of a trigger finger. There was
gold in them thar hills, gold at Spring Creek, gold at Crook City, gold at
Central City, gold on the mountains, in the rivers, and in the dark depths far
below the surface of the earth. For centuries uncounted, men have sought, fought,
and died for gold as they did in the Black Hills when the west was young.
Brave men came from the north, the east, the south, the west. By the tens, the
hundreds, the thousands. They tunneled the mountainside. They combed the gulches.
They strained the rivers, creeks, and streams in their wild quest for gold. But
the romantic day of the Placer minor was short live. No more could gold be washed
from the coarse gravel of the creek beds. The Plasters were worked out. The
bewhiskered pioneer with pick, shovel, and gold pan had served his day.
And that day he served well, for he set the stage for a greater era and new
industry destined to take its place with agriculture in South Dakota. Among the
men who sought for gold in those daring days was Moses Manuel. He was interested
in the scientific mining of hard rock formation, getting gold out of quartz ore
so hard it could not be chipped by a miner's pick.
Manuel and his party prospected the winter of 1875 without success. And then
on April 9th, 1876, they discovered a ledge, an outcropping of ore that
then was termed a lead. They sank their discovery shaft in the side of a draw,
and they called it home stake lead. And the mining camp which leaped to life took
the name of lead city. The original site of the home stake mine has disappeared,
and in its place has risen a thriving industry geared to modern progress. Today,
lead is still a mining camp, but a mining camp with 20th century trimmings. The
home stake mine is still there, for lead is home stake and home stake is lead.
But mining in the glamorous days of yore is a far cry from the complicated and
scientific methods in use today. It takes more than a pick and shovel to get gold
ore out of the ground now, and more than a gold pan to get the gold out of the
ore. Would you like to mine for gold? Today, gold mining means raw materials, men
and construction, combined with the science of chemistry and the wonders of
modern engineering, all of which are necessary to make home stake ore pay. New
construction which will take two years at a cost of about three million dollars
to complete. This complex steel structure, the head frame, rises from a man
-made mountaintop plateau to reach nearly 150 feet skyward. In this massive
building, made with more than 800,000 bricks, steel and concrete, giant equipment
will control the hoisting and lowering of cages which carry men and materials.
This model of the Yates shaft shows what has to be done. The great construction
work underground blasted out of solid rock, but it isn't done from the top down.
The shafts are cut from the bottom up, tunnels or drifts, as the miners call
them, are blasted from the solid rock to connect old workings with the exact
location of the new shaft. Then the latter moves upward in many separate segments
or links which one by one are merged into a single vertical opening. Precision
engineering makes sure the drifts meet the new shaft at the right places, but
it's not as easy as that. Opening up a level and placing it in proper condition
for mining requires many months of work, drilling, blasting, ditching, hauling
waste rock. More than three and one half million feet of timber, or enough to
build more than 200 five-room houses, go into the shaft. This drift
leads to one of the ore bodies.
Two years to finish the job, hundreds of men at work under the ground, on the
surface, high in the air. Two years of work through the toughest kind of rock,
millions of feet of timber, hundreds of tons of concrete and steel, thousands
upon hundreds of thousands of dollars for equipment, before one single ton of ore
can be taken out. That's what gold mining is today. Where is that old time pick
and shovel now? The new Yates plant, when complete, will look like this several
million dollar Ross plant, built in 1934 with a shaft where operations are now
being conducted on many levels.
The levels are spaced 100 feet apart down to 1100 feet,
then 150 feet apart to the bottom of
the mine. Now we're after gold. Down we go.
Eight one. Eight one. That's the signal we heard a moment ago.
The marvels of shortwave radio used for safety in the mining of gold ore.
These great and powerful drums, each holding more than a mile of stout steel
hoisting cable in one layer, wind and unwind rapidly as the cages speed up and
down the shaft, carrying their cargo to a safe haven. Vertical transportation
lowering human cargo over 4,000 feet into the earth, four times as deep as the
height of the Empire State Building. Flashes of light are levels.
An indicating arm is geared with micrometer fineness and tells the operator
exactly where the cage is at all times. 3650 feet,
3800 feet, 3950 feet, 4100 feet below the surface at a
speed more than three times as fast as a modern elevator in perfect safety.
Over 2,000 men work for home stake. The miners work in two shifts which are
rotated, changes in hours for every man. At home stake, safety
is a first consideration.
Helmets of light material tougher than steel, work lamps with a battery to keep
them lighted for eight hours, steel-toed shoes with spiked soles for safety. But
above all, it is the thorough understanding of their job and an unfailing
observance of safety practices on the part of the home stake record to its
remarkably low accident rate. Prospecting, shaft sinking,
drifting, raising, cross-cutting, diamond drilling, all preliminary to
actual mining of the ore.
Here's the air-driven diamond drill outlining the gold-bearing rock. Gold ore is
mined by two methods, the shrinkage-stoke method without timber and the square
set method with timber.
These miners are climbing into a stoke from which the ore is being
removed by the shrinkage method.
Shrinkage-stoke mining consists of breaking ore away from solid rock. As the roof
of the opening or stoke becomes higher, the miners use the broken ore
as a platform on which to work.
Loose rock hanging overhead is pried off with long steel bars. Miners
call this barring down.
Pneumatic drills bite deep into the tough hard ore to make holes for blasting.
Ten feet into solid rock, every day 3,000 steel drills go into the mine.
Every day 3,000 steel bits are taken out for sharpening.
Priing down loose rock, drilling holes deep into the ore, and loading the holes
for blasting require an eight-hour working cycle. Three million sticks of
dynamite every year, one million blasting caps to set off a million blasts for
nearly a million and a half tons of ore mined annually in the home stake mine.
The blasting is done at the end of the day. Outgo the tools and outgo the men to
a safe place far from the blast. They light the fuses, the smoke curls up, it's
all over until another shift repeats the cycle. When the shrinkage-stoke is mined
up to a height of 125 feet, the chamber is filled with broken ore,
which must be drawn through shoots into one-ton cars.
Strong timber planking and steel guards protect the loaders from flying ore.
One ton of ore to a car, 20 cars to a train, 20 tons of solid ore and not
a flake of gold in sight.
Locomotive is powered by electricity, locomotive is powered by compressed air,
all run on tracks from all points underground, run regularly on a complete
railway system, 80 miles of steel track to carry equipment,
materials, and gold ore.
Ore mined by the square set method consists of timbering to take out the ore
which was left in place to support the roof and side walls during shrinkage-stoke
mining. These men are working under the pillar you saw in the picture a moment
ago. The process is the same here as in the shrinkage-stoke method. Drill, blast,
and remove the ore. Water runs through a rifle-drilled hole in the center of the
drill steel. The water does three jobs, cools, lubricates, and prevents dust.
Down goes the ore to the loading level below, and what punishment that timber
takes. It has to be done. The model shows you what the mine actually looks like,
a massive underground structure of sturdy timber. The higher up the miners drill
and blast away, the farther down the ore falls.
The miners go up and the ore comes down. In this subterranean cavern are supplies
ready for use, timber for extending the square set structure, tools, drills, and
extra equipment standing by on the job for the time it is needed. Air
for power and air for help. Every minute of every day 500,000 cubic feet of
fresh air go into the mine and 500,000 cubic feet come out. Clean, fresh air
every minute of the day for every man underground. These men are working in a
heading, a dead end away from the main drifts and cross cuts of the mine, but
they get plenty of clean air through canvas or galvanized iron ventilating pipes.
4,000 feet underground, but still there is air for the miners and air for power.
But why air for power? To drive 500 air drills, 38 air locomotives, small
ventilating fans, and other equipment. Where does it all come
from? Why it comes from here.
These great compressors running day and night furnish high pressure
air for many machines.
Water for spraying to keep down the dust, water from sand used in filling worked
out shrinkage stokes, water from the earth, water for the drills, 600 gallons of
water pumped from the mine each minute or enough for a city of 20,000 people. And
it all has to go someplace.
But where's the gold? Let's look for it. That's funny, there's none to be seen.
It's there all right, but in minute quantities. Four tenths of an
ounce to a ton of rock.
The ore is hoisted at night. This skip is filled with eight tons of ore and there
goes. 25,000 pounds of ore and steel at 2
,500 feet per minute.
All of the new timber used in the mine is lowered through shafts.
The old and broken timber is hoisted to the surface.
More than a thousand miners are lowered and hoisted through the shafts every day.
This heated tunnel leads directly from the shaft to a modern change house.
The miners pass from the shaft to this room without going outside.
Here modern facilities guard against sudden changes in temperature, safety
precautions on the surface as well as underground.
Here's the gold ore again and what a beating is in store for that rock.
The ore is on its way now to the gyratory crusher, the first
of a series of crushing machines.
No one machine can do the job, so the Simon's crusher now breaks the rocks down
to about two inch size like this.
It takes power and plenty of it.
Two inch pebbles from chunks of solid rock, but it's only the beginning.
From the crusher to the stamp mill, 180 stamps, each with a falling weight of 1
,550 pounds. 300,000 tons of water are used every
24 hours in the process to reduce the ore to a fineness
sufficient for the removal of the gold.