Mining in the western United States entered its great era after
1860 through use of the double-jack, black powder, hand steel,
Bickford fuse, wire rope, and the steam engine. Those were the
years of bonanza strikes: Henry Wickenburg's Vulture Mine in
Arizona Territory; the main hard-rock gold strike in the desert
Southwest; Ed Schieffelin's discovery of vast silver deposits in
Tombstone, Arizona; and the Tonopah-Goldfield strike in Nevada,
which netted over one hundred million dollars. Black Powder and
Hand Steel describes the miners and the machinery they used. Otis
E. Young, Jr., gives an account of the miners, particularly the
Cornish and Irish, their origins, character, social life,
pleasures, and, most important, their labors. The miner's lot
depended on the tools he used, and the author traces the evolution
of the miner's most important tools: from hoisting bucket to mine
elevator, cold mining to dynamite, ore car to skip, hemp to wire
rope, and slow match to Bickford fuse. Young reveals the
difficulties of prospecting and mining two of the West's most
valuable ores, gold and silver, and gives readers a firsthand look
at the challenges of working even the most successful strikes. A
companion volume to Young's Western Mining, Black Powder and Hand
Steel is written in the same lively style - informative and
entertaining for general readers and scholars. It is also well
illustrated, with drawings by Buck O'Donnell.
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