A Piece of Coal Mining History

Hullo!!! Today we are on another adventure... to the Morden Colliery. I was out this way last fall and... the old concrete pithead and tipple were covered in scaffolding for reconstructive work but... it's all done now...

Oooh... ahhh... apparently this is the last standing concrete pithead/tipple in North America. There is a wooden one in Alberta but out here, anything built of wood has long since decayed. Good thing they used reinforced concrete when they built this in 1913.

You can see the new bits of concrete where they reinforced they old stuff...

And here you can see some of the old rebar showing through the old concrete...

This is really cool that they got money to save this piece of history...

It would look even better with blue sky as a backdrop but... we have clouds today.

This tells a bit about the history of the mine... apparently it opened in 1913 and went bankrupt a few years later in 1921...

There's all sorts of old building foundations around here too... but the trees have done quite a number on them.

Oooh... ahhhhh.... where is that blue sky?

I'm going to guess these were not stuffie alcoves but places for floor joists...

We found some violets too! In Cocoa Beanie's colours...

Purple to match one side of his vest and...

Pink to match the other side of the vest! How's that for colour coordination...

We also found a stair case to nowhere...

And a monster crack in a foundation...

And... more violets! Even some white ones... nice. Although... I feel like something is poking my butt....

Yup... what does that look like to you?

Uh-huh... a shot gun casing... in a park. Hmph...

No shooting the wildlife in a public park!! Hmph....