Black Rock - Part 1

 Sandy Bear here... I am going to do a little series here on black rock... aka coal mining. My pal, Little Fox, writes blogs about archaeological and historical sights in his area... so here I am!!

Did you know that Vancouver Island used to be a big coal mining area? Yup... and the area from Ladysmith to Lantzville had some really productive mines. One of them was, not surprisingly, called the No. 1 Esplanade Mine. It produced more coal than all of the other Vancouver Island mines combined.

But coal mining is not without its problems... they are notorious for explosions. And, on 3 May 1887, 150 miners died in a coal mine explosion. The resulting fires and afterdamp (carbon monoxide) was deadly. Of those 150 miners, 46 were Chinese but they are only known by their payroll numbers, no names. Most of them were from the Mah clan near Guangzhou, China.

There is a commemorative display near the location of the No. 1 Esplanade Mine. We've never been here, and I thought... it was time we went.

This is a picture of what the above-ground works looked like at No. 1 Esplanade. There aren't a lot of archaeological sites still in existence from the coal mining era but... there is one... stay tuned!