Show life of a gilsonite miner by Max EDITOR S NOTE A few f month's ago one of the Basin's I Max who was in the vicinity of 1 completed a story he had been writing for some time life of a Gilsonite n the i Max attended My ton and Roose-p veit schools and the University of and also served in armed I Have read his story and find it very interestingly Writing telling a story about a local During the weeks ahead we are going to print Peatross' story in serial form in the Standard We hope you readers enjoy his story of the life eZ I a Gilsonite which is I written from actual experiences the author has had as a rope- ride and He began his mining experiences at the age years ap- The waste dump lay around the cast side of the shaft and was made smooth on top so the ron ore could be stacked on it after agi it had been Next to the derrick stood the ore n j blackened by gilsonite always ready for their The and social center for the was some fifteen by twenty-five but large enough for ten to fifteen men about all the mine ever Bath water created no problem here on the desert as the mine had to be bailed of some twenty-four hundred or more gallons a day Peculiar stuff this mine It was so heavily mineralized that it left a white trail over a mile down the The deeper in the the more mineral it contained had to be drawn from about three hundred feet If it came from anywhere deeper than that it wouldn't lather and would slide over the dust and tar on a miner's without taking any of the grit Fresh water used in the shower and at the cookhouse was hauled in fifty gallon barrels A blacksmith shop made of sandstone maintained its original form and uniqueness two hunder feet south and west of the thing consisted mostly of sharpening long tong the gilsonite miner's main piece of On the north of the three or four hundred were the cookhouse and bunk-houses I recall spending a winter with temperatures from ten to fifteen below in one of these About all they were good for was a wind and they didn't stop much of The heavy bucket slipped down with only an occasional padded slap on a saturated liner The walls of the timbered heavily on all four covered with slime and slid Only when I looked down at my well-planted on the broad bail of the eight-foot-deep did I realize that I was going- down and the walls were standing I wasn't This was my first trip down into the I was making it but I wasn't scared I didn't take any the bucket and were about two hundred feet down and I could hear water dripping from the timbers and splashing into little ponds back beyond the man-way The shaft was getting much The walls slowed down no the bucket jumped beneath me and skewered violently to the west only there was no wall to stop I choked the cable and looked behind the west wall tilted at an angle ten feet above by head I looked back around in front and saw the bucket laying on its side on two long A shaft went straight on down below these bars for perhaps fifty and my electric miner's lamp reflected on the water in the Up by now some twenty feet or a roller set in the west wall at the head of the slide began to thump as they came against No Tor undue Old Dave had told me how to take the and I knew from the way the miners talked about it what it would be like I moved my hand down as low as I could on the cable and still kept my balance on the Sure enough the bottom of the bucket flipped back into a downward position and the second roller on the easl wall slid up past the edge of the The cable caught it about chest high My face was only a few Inches from the From here on I was due for a No one had mentioned The instead of being timbered on all four were only timbered on two the two on the the vein side of the or that the sides on which the ore was left when the shaft was The other sides were the bare rock vails of the The bucket banged and thundered between these rock walls guided by the liner boards on either But now 1 saw nothing behind the liner boards except a few holding loose walls in and bulkheads holding tons of loose The gilsonite had been mined Then I noticed a light just below on the south side of the This was Art at the four-hundred and fifty-foot level where he was shipping job that was soon to become mine for most of my mining McDonald stopped the bucket even with the and I stepped What re you down here I thought you was Dave asked me if I wanted to come and I said that I did Why didn't the nut come with Art stood on the far edge of the five-foot-long landing leaning against the Behind him the mouth of the bin gaped about three feet and on the other a few feet was a tram I've got one more bucket of ore to Art go get it and pull the and we'll go back on He stepped onto the grabbed the bellin line and gave a couple of quick The bucket started down and hv disappeared from I stuck my head out into the shaft to see what he was but dripped onto my neck and ran down my I decided to listen of watching I Clashed my light back into the drift The tram car was on a track made of thirty pound rails laying across about fifteen a to keep rocks from falling on the sagged undo years of These bulkheads were made by wedging in between the and then laying lagging i five-foot lengths of on The beam of light faded out into the The draft across the shaft appeared to be a The had again even with the Be |