Black Rock - Part 2

 Hullo again! Today we are at another coal mining memorial. This one is the Morden Colliery and is one of the few remaining coal mining sites with "something" still visible

Err... hmmm... well... yes... there we go. I had heard that Morden Colliery was undergoing restoration work because it was falling apart but... sigh...

This is what it normally looks like! It's the head frame and tipple...

Obviously, we can't see any of that... but there are a few things we can still look at.

There's the information display but...

It's behind chain-link... so hard to read. But... the Morden tipple was built in the early 1900s and was one of the first on Vancouver Island. It's also the only one remaining on Vancouver Island today... In fact, it is one of only two in all of North America! The other one is at O’Gara No. 12 Mine in Muddy, Illinois...

Let's go exploring a bit...

We can walk in around behind the tipple...

And... there is this!

It is the base of the old smokestack... the PCCM stands for Pacific Coast Coal Mine company...

You can see the smoke stack in this picture...

And in the bush, you'll find the foundations of other buildings... which tree roots are slowly breaking up.

It doesn't take long for the forest to reclaim its own. The Morden Mine was all that productive and sputtered to a halt in the 1930s...

Here... we have a Miners' Memorial...

This memorial tells us that the coal mined on Vancouver Island was of the bituminous variety, which means that the coal mines were among the most dangerous in the world because bituminous coal is quite volatile and can release gases... not good for miners and beary susceptible to explosions... It's kind of interesting that on the East Coast... Nova Scotia has a lot of bituminous coal mines as well... and explosions too.

Right then... we are now off along an old rail line to explore a bit of a regional trail... and maybe find some coal!

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!