The Comstock Lode

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Hello All!

It’s been some time since I’ve been blogging, been so busy finishing The Hills of Gold Unchanging and A Sea of Green Unfolding !

A few months ago I completed the research and wrote the sections about Virginia City and the Comstock Lode,

comstock5

and am transcribing them from my … scribbles to Scrivener, and I’m in the chapters about the Comstock Lode, in Virginia City and Gold Hill areas of what was then Utah Territory, and is now the state of Nevada.

The Comstock had a unique problem, for the West. Unlike gold lying in veins of quartz between solid rock, as is found in the California mines, in Virginia City, copious silver existed in the mix of loose quartz and clay making up the rich lode. Unfortunately, the composition made the lode highly unstable, as repeated dehydration and re-wetting of the rock mix made it alternately swell and shrink. The timbering methods used up until the advent of Philipp’s invention were unable to hold back the loose rock and keep the tunnels open, resulting in frequent and fatal cave-ins.

Philipp was brought from California to try to solve the problem the miners in the Comstock Lode were experiencing. He made it work, and his square-set timbering was to become the gold standard in mining for the next fifty years.

Well done, Philipp!

Here is square-set timbering!

Sqsettimbtitless&t(this and following from:Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology

www.nbmg.unr.edu)

Sqsettimbphoto

 

I really liked this one, because it shows the miners in it…
images…and how it was made in situ.  (From the  Nevada State MuseumPhotograph Collection)

 

 

This from the Eureka Miner’s Report, photo is of a mine in the Dakotas:

(from: http://eurekaminer.blogspot.co.nz/2010/08/eureka-miner-weekly-roundup-new.html)

Homestake Square Set (323X479)

 

UZS_00103_D_36_Deideshiemer

(From: http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/square-set-timbering)

And the man himself, who started it all, at the Ophir Mine in Virginia City, Mr. Philipp Deidesheimer.  One can only assume that is his lady wife.

I came across a reference to an episode on the old Western serial Bonanza and looked it up. Just finished watching it!  While the show varies a bit from what I’ve read in the research, it’s a good little watch, and will give you a good idea of how the square-set timbering method described in Hills of Gold works!

Here’s the link for it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSD2TSjjJ8c

 

 

Enjoy!

Back to writing!

XX

Lizzi

NB:  A big thank you to all of those people who have placed such wonderful photos and drawings on their websites!

XX

L

 

 

 

by LizziT

Lizzi grew up riding wild in the Santa Cruz Mountain redwoods, became an equine veterinarian at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and practiced in the Gold and Pony Express Country of California before emigrating to New Zealand. She is the proud mother of two boys in that sea of green. When she's not writing, she's swinging a rapier or shooting a bow in medieval garb, riding or driving a carriage, playing in the garden on her hobby farm, singing, cooking, being an equine veterinarian or high school science teacher. She is multiply published and awarded in special interest magazines and veterinary periodicals.

With her debut novel, A Long Trail Rolling, she was Finalist 2013 RWNZ Great Beginnings; Winner 2014 RWNZ Pacific Hearts Award for the unpublished full manuscript; Winner 2015 RWNZ Koru Award for Best First Novel and third in Koru Long Novel section; and finalist in the 2015 Best Indie Book Award.