The Charcoal Kilns of Death Valley

The charcoal kilns are located in Wildrose Canyon on the western side of Death Valley seven miles east of Emigrant Canyon road. The kilns, standing like 25 foot tall bee hives, made charcoal for the furnaces of the Modock Mine located in the Argus Mountains 25 miles to the west across the Panamint Valley. The Modock was started in 1875 and produced $2,000,000 in lead and silver. William Randolph Hearst’s son, Senator George Hearst, ran the mine through the Modock Consolidated Mining Company. Hearst’s company bought a large number of wood claims around the Wildrose area for a steady supply of wood.

 Building the kilns

The kilns were built by a Consolidated employee named Morris and were completed in 1877. It is said that Morris used Swiss stonemasons and Chinese laborers to complete the kilns. The ten kilns, 25 feet high and thirty feet across, were designed with a low doorway and a high window in the back. Around the base were small vent holes to allow just enough air for a slow burn.

Working the Kilns

Mexican laborers cut the surrounding pinyon pines and loaded the kilns from both the upper window as well as the front door. Each kiln could hold approximately 42 cords of pine logs and after filling each kiln a heavy iron door was used to cover the window and front door to reduce the available oxygen in order to retort or produce the charcoal. After burning for about one week, each kiln would produce 2,000 bushels of charcoal. Charcoal produced from wood keeps its basic shape but is converted to 96% pure carbon content. Charcoal was used in refining ores because it burned much more slowly and at much higher heat.

It is estimated that the kilns employed about 40 woodcutters and workmen and the temporary town of Wildrose camp was located somewhere nearby. Remi Nadeau’s Cerro Gordo Freight Company hauled the charcoal to the smelters by pack train and wagon. The silver mines of the Murdock lasted but a few years and the kilns soon closed down around 1879.

For further Death Valley information go to www.sierramayhemjeeptours.com

Hallidie Endless Wire Rope Tramway

The Hallidie Ropeway consists of a single endless moving wire rope or cable passing around horizontal grip pulleys at each end of the tramway and is supported at intervals by towers using vertical pulleys or sheaves. To this endless ropeway aerial ore cars are secured and as the rope travels it moves the cars and their ore with it. The weight of the loaded ore cars and gravity move the ropeway down hill were the cars are emptied of their ore at the bottom. The empty cars are moved back up hill on the ropeway by the heavier ore filled cars going down hill. In this way there is no need for any type of propulsion or than gravity.

The Hallidie Tramway was invented by Andrew Smith Hallidie. Hallidie was born in London in 1836. His father, also Andrew Smith, was a blacksmith and inventor in Scotland and held several patents for making metal wire ropes from 1835 thru1849. The younger Smith later adopted the surname Hallidie in honor of his Uncle and Godfather, Sir Andrew Hallidie.

Both father and son came to California to work the gold mines. After no luck prospecting, Hallidie’s father returned home while Hallidie stayed and became a blacksmith. He noticed that the manila hemp rope being used to haul heavy ore buckets up from the mines wore out quickly due to weather and wear. He developed woven iron rope or cable that weighed less than hemp, didn’t absorb water, and were much stronger and lasted years instead of months. It was Hallidie's wire rope that was the basis for his aerial ore cars that he later developed around 1867. Hundreds of Hallidie bridges and tramways were built around the world for the next thirty years including the Sierra Buttes mine located above Sierra City.

In 1871 Hallidie completed plans to move street cars on rails propelled by underground cables. Hallidie had watched a horse drawn trolley in San Francisco and felt sorry for the horses struggling up the wet cobble stoned hill as they slipped and were dragged to their death. On August 1, 1873 atop Knob Hill, Hallidie along with friends and associates, boarded San Fransico’s first cable car and rode down Clay Street from Jones Street to Kearny Street. Hallidie’s cable car invention was a success and repeated in several other cities. Hallidie became a wealthy and prominent citizen of San Fransisco until his death in 1900.

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Pelton Wheel Powers The Mines

(1829-1908) who is thought of as the father of hydroelectric power. Pelton was born in Vermillion Ohio and came to California in 1850. He became a fisherman on the Sacramento River for three years but then turned to the gold mines of Camptonville, Nevada City, and Grass Valley. In 1864 he became a carpenter and a millwright.

Pelton Water Wheel Kentucky Mine Sierra County, California

The pelton wheel was invented by Lester Allan Pelton (1829-1908) who is thought of as the father of hydroelectric power. Pelton was born in Vermillion Ohio and came to California in 1850. He became a fisherman on the Sacramento River for three years but then turned to the gold mines of Camptonville, Nevada City, and Grass Valley. In 1864 he became a carpenter and a millwright.

During this same time period the gold mines in the area needed high amounts of power to drive the mills that crushed the gold ore and to run the drills and to pump air into the mines. The top fed paddle water wheels typically used in flour mills were too slow and very inefficient for this purpose and a much more powerful design was needed. To increase efficiency the paddles were replaced with turbines or buckets affixed around the outside of a wheel with a nozzle used as a water jet forced into the buckets from the bottom to increase the efficiency and power output. Even so, the water splashed backward from each bucket onto the next bucket cutting down on efficiency.

Pelton had a passion for developing an even more efficient water wheel and designed some thirty plus different wheels. His final design came about quite by accident. There are two stories surrounding this development. In the first, as told by his friend Jim Hutchinson, Pelton was visiting a neighbor and watched the neighbor use a garden hose to chase a stray cow out of his garden. Pelton noticed the water divided as it struck the cow’s nose splitting into two sprays and deflecting out the sides of the cow’s nostrils. In the second more probable story, Pelton was watching one of his spinning water turbines when the key holding the wheel onto its shaft came loose causing the wheel to become misaligned from the nozzle jet. So instead of the water jet hitting the cup in the center, the slippage caused the water to hit the edge of the cups and it was redirected out the other side of the cups instead of slowing the direct flow of water.

 Pelton first tried a staggered bucket design (Figure 12) but finally settled on a split double cup design (Figure 13) which gave Pelton the most efficient wheel. His new design was first used at the Mayflower Mine in Nevada City, California in 1878. Pelton later went on to patent his turbine design in 1880.

He met with little sales success until 1883 when the Idaho Mining Company of Grass Valley arranged a competition of four different water wheel design companies to help them decide which one to purchase. Pelton’s turbine wheel won with a 90.2% efficiency compared to the next closest company’s wheel at only 76.5%. This success drove his sales to the point that in 1888 Pelton started the Pelton Water Wheel Company in San Francisco.

Lester Pelton

In 1887 a miner attached Pelton's wheel to a dynamo and produced the first hydroelectric power in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. On August 27, 1889 the invention was officially patented. By 1893 the Age of Hydroelectric power was in full swing. It has proven to be one most efficient inventions in mining and the production of hydroelectric power in our world.

The biggest Pelton wheel ever built was thirty feet across built by Cobb and Hesselmeyer of San Francisco. Its speed was 65 rpm @ 350 psi and a single water jet of 1 3/4 inches producing over 1000 horsepower.