Illumination in Old Mines
Exploring old mines is a very popular outdoor activity. I hope everyone is being careful, knowing the basics of underground safety, wearing hard hats and having at least two sources of light.
If you want to see what real darkness is, go in an underground mine beyond where light enters the portal and turn off your light. It’s so dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your face. If you are not accustomed to that kind of darkness, it’s scary.
Imagine the old underground miners working long hours in cramped conditions with very little light to illuminate their work. It’s hard to comprehend why they would risk everything but that was the only way to make a living in the frontier days of Mohave County.
Having conducted sampling programs of underground mines in the western US and South America, the history of illumination has always interested me. I may be dating myself but on the first program I conducted, we used carbide lamps because we were far from a source to recharge our electric lamps. Carbide is easy to use and the only thing you need is a lantern, a quantity of carbide and some water.
During my days as mine geologist at Mineral Park, it was my job to examine the geology of the entire property including the area that had early native American workings. I found stone hammers and other artifacts testifying to the early miners’ activities. Sometimes, I would sit at the portal of those workings and imagine how they could see to do the mining. I had a lead-acid battery and electric lamp. I guess they used anything at hand to make open fire such as burning dry plants. The stalk of a century plant would make a great torch handle and wrapping dry reeds or yucca leaves would make good fuel for the torch.
Sometimes, I was lucky and found stone hammers. They were easy to spot because they were usually made of a very hard rock called diabase. Diabase is not found at Mineral Park, so it had to be brought in from somewhere else. It looked out of place; diabase is a dark gray-brown color whereas the quartz monzonite country rock at Mineral Park is a light tan to white color.
In researching historical illumination in old mines, I learned that open flame has been used since the earliest time man went underground to find minerals. In drawings contained in the earliest mining book, De Rey Metallica, 1556, miners are shown holding torches. The Greeks and Romans used oil lamps until candles were introduced in the 1st Century A.D. In the 16th Century, oil wick lamps became popular.
Candle holder dating from the early 1800s used in South American mines. They could be hung from the hook on top or stuck in a mine timber using the long spike
The most typical underground mining illumination source of the 1800s were carbide lamps. These are lamps with two compartments, the upper holds water and the lower holds carbide. There is a valve between the two that controls how much water drips on the carbide. Water reacts with the carbide and releases acetylene gas. The gas is funneled to the burner at the center of a reflector. When the gas is lit, usually by flint and wheel on the side of the reflector, the acetylene gas burns with a bright flame. To control the flame, the valve is either opened for a longer, brighter flame or closed down to a drip for a shorter flame. Of course, this type of lamp cannot be used in coal mines because of the explosive gas found in those types of mines.
Carbide lamps were the best source of light for miners in the 1800s because carbide was easy to ship and store and you only needed water to produce light. Candles would burn too fast and they did not put out much light.
If you explore some of the mines in Mohave County, be on the lookout for small drums, about three feet tall. They might even have the word “Carbide” stenciled on the side. These were the drums that carbide was transported and stored in. Inside the mine, the miners would use smaller watertight cans to store their carbide. In a pinch, Prince Albert tobacco cans also worked. Prince Albert cans had to be watertight to keep the tobacco fresh so they also worked to store carbide for the working miners.
