Almont North Dakota
1906 Centennial 2006
Strip Mining
of Coal
by Leonard Olson
One day in
1895 Frank Owens was walking down the creek near his homestead and saw
some coal sticking out of the ground. He dug some of it and tried it
in his fire. It looked like black shingles and burned like wood. Here
was fuel to be had for stripping off a little dirt.
As it was on Government Land, it was free
to everyone to use for the uncovering and loading. Word of this free coal
traveled fast. It was of such a fine quality that people came from many
miles around to get it. Though on Government Land, it was known as the “Frank
Owens Mine” because he had found it.
Four years later Frank Owens traded his homestead
to Tenius Ramsland for a team of horses and left the country without “proving
up” on the place. Tenius was then only nineteen years old. He sold
the buildings and fences for his investment and let it go, but always liked
the location of the Owens homestead. In 1905, Tenius decided to file on
a homestead of his own and filed on part of the former Owens homestead and
adjoining land which contained the famous “Frank Owens Mine” where
neighbors from the surrounding country had been securing their free coal
for ten years.
Soon an adjoining homestead was filed on by
Carl Thor., One evening he said to his wife, “I’ve been wondering
if coal like the Frank Owens Mine isn’t under our land too. I think
tomorrow I will get a few guys together and see how deep it is and the space
it covers.”
Mrs. Thor questioned, “Well, how are
you going to find out how much dirt is on top of the coal and how deep the
coal vein is?”
“I think I will take a well digger and dig a hole, then let a guy
go down with a light,” replied her husband.
Well, the next day came. He rounded up some
of his neighbors, got a well digger and started digging. After he got down
there he measured the height of the coal, and took a sample of coal up with
him. They had it tested and waited for the answer to come back. After they
got their reply and found out it was very good coal, he got men together
and some horses and fresnoes. Then the work started.
They started stripping off the dirt. They stripped off a little every
day. They worked day after day until finally they got through. They
they started to drill a hole with a hand auger. After they had the hole
dug, they poured some blasting powder in. they put in the fuse and lit
it. then it would blast the coal loose. Then they had to load it by
hand into wagons. It had to be hauled to town with horses and it took
hours just to get it to town.
When they got to town they had to unload the
wagons by hand into railroad cars to be shipped out. Then they had to go
back after more in that slow fashion. For many years they hauled coal to
town to be shipped to some other state with horses and wagons.
There was one guy who hauled coal who always
liked to haul just as large a load as he could get on the wagon. One time
he put on such a big load the horses couldn’t pull it our of the mine.
They had to hook on two more teams to get it out of the mine. He also liked
to haul such overly big chucks and he always liked to come into town with
these big chunks of coal so everybody could see him and they couldn’t
understand how he could load them into the wagon. One day in the mine it
took ten guys to put one chunk in his wagon. When he got to town he thought
himself pretty big, but to his disgust no one saw him come in with that
big chunk. When he got over to the coal car of the train he couldn’t
get it unloaded. He had to walk down town to get some men to help him. He
could only get seven men and they couldn’t get it unloaded. They worked
for about an hour and a half to get it broken up in order to be able to
lift it. After that he didn’t try to haul such big chunks.
Then there was another guy who was pulling
out of the mine when he tipped over. He got the wagon on its wheels, and
then he had to load it up again. He went about five feet further and tipped
over again. He had to hurry and load it up and get out of the way. He tipped
over four more times in less than a quarter of a mile, but finally he got
going and reached home with his load.
One day it rained so bad they were unable
to work. The mine got so slippery they couldn’t get out of the mine.
It had quit raining before the next day so they started hauling again.
The next day it was pretty muddy but they
were making it. About the time they were going good one guy got stuck with
a team and wagon. The horses went up to their bellies in mud and they couldn’t
even move, so he had to go back to the mine and get one of the guys to pull
him out.
He said, “Can I get one of the guys
to pull me out of the mud?”
“How far are you?” one of them
replied.
“Just over the hill.”
Okay. I’ll unhook my team and be right
with you.”
Well he got up to his wagon and hooked on
to it. He could hardly budge it so they had to go back and get another team.
They worked there about an hour before they
got the wagon out. After that they didn’t have any trouble getting
through. They only shipped about twenty tons of coal from Almont that year
because of all the trouble they had getting started. They didn’t know
much about mining that first year.
The next year they started early and knew
more about it so it didn’t take so long. They shipped coal from Almont
quite a few years. Mr. Thor said the most he had ever shipped was forty
five cars. And for a car load of coal he got only $1.75 for about three
ton. compare that with today’s prices. There is a great change. Today
you can get $3.50 per ton. Now you don’t have to do it by hand, although
there are great expenditures for machinery.
Compare all those old methods with the new
methods. There is a great change today. For locating coal they use a core
machine. The way that works is to drill down in the ground and the dirt
comes up in a core form. Then the miner can see how much dirt there is and
how much coal. They test on places, and then send sample of the coal to
the capitol to be tested. Then they have to uncover it with the use of a
bulldozer. It doesn’t take nearly as much time as it did with the
old method. Today they can scrape off many feet a day. and the blasting
method is very simple too. They have an electric drill that digs holes.
A cap and fuse is put in the dynamite, and then the dynamite is placed in
the hole. the fuse is lit and the dynamite loosens the coal. When they take
a steam shovel and dump it into a screener that screens out the slack, stoker
coal and chunks. The slack goes out one side, stoker coal out the other,
and the chunks to out the middle. The trucks go right underneath. they they
have a sizer which the chunks go though that makes them into different sizes.
You can get six inchers, eight, ten, twelve, or any other size you want.
It is nice for a stove to have a definite size of coal because it saves
all the work of breaking up the chunks. Having it fit into the stove, you
won’t have all the slack caused by breaking up the chinks. All you
have to do is pick up a chunk and place it in the furnace. Another nice
thing about small chunks is that some people may not have a very large space
to throw the coal into the bin. By having a certain size it will save time
and work of breading up those big chunks into smaller ones so it doesn’t
make it so hard to handle. When you unload it from the truck you won’t
have to break the chunks up.
The shipping of coal today is very simple
compared to a few years back. Today all they ever use is trucks. There is
no use of team and wagon for hauling. Today all you have to do is back the
truck under the loader and it loads your truck up. There is no need of loading
it up by hand. Today there is nothing but stoker coal being shipped by trains.
There are no chunks being shipped any more. When loading into the coal cars
you don’t even have to unload it by hand. They have loaders that load
right into the cars, all they have to do is dump the coal in the loader
and go back after more. It doesn’t take nearly the time to load up
and unload. Driving from the coal car to the mine doesn’t take hardly
any time. You can go about fifty or sixty miles an hour. In the old days
you could go only about two miles.
Like Mr. Thor said, “There has surely
been some changes today from years back in the strip mining of coal.”