MiningConnection.com

Published: July 5, 2011 | Share This

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Travis Wolfe works on a sign at the Telluride Historical Museum’s new outdoor mining exhibit. [Photo by Melissa Plantz]
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Much of the mining activity that propped up Telluride’s economy in the town’s early days took place out in the elements.

Prospectors ranged over rugged peaks searching for veins, and miners dynamited and dug their way through the bowels of the mountains, hung in high trams over rocky slopes and lived in wind-whipped camps.

So it makes sense that the Telluride Historical Society’s brand-new interactive mining museum, where kids can try sluicing and step into a mine portal, is outdoors.

The exhibit, “Hard Rocks, Rough Lives,” features an impressive and fascinating collection of mining memorabilia — from rusted mining carts on rails to worn pickaxes and an old miner’s helmet — and includes hands-on activities for kids.

The Historical Museum unveiled the exhibit to the public on Sunday, July 3 with a celebration featuring food, live music, face painting, free beer and more. Admission was free. Along with the mining exhibit, the museum showed a new outdoor educational area just west of the building.

Lauren Bloemsma, executive director of the museum, said the museum is excited for the community to see the new additions.

“It’s really exciting,” she said. “This is a long time coming and it’s highly educational. It’s allowing us to really better tell the story of mining in the San Juans. Telling it outside is really the way to do it.”

Both the educational area and mining exhibit are the culmination of work that has been going on since last summer. The seeds of the project go back to 2008, however, when museum staff began to explore ways to preserve its outdoor mining artifacts.

“We needed to get them off the ground and protect them from the elements,” Bloemsma said.

After hiring a consultant and doing some brainstorming, the museum came up with the plan for an outdoor exhibit and education area right outside its back door. The Wings Foundation helped fund the project, and the museum received boosts from private donors as well.

Crews transformed what used to be a grassy space on the west side of the building into a patio encircled by two levels of stone-bench seating. This space will be used for lectures, school groups, small parties, historical demonstrations and more. It saw its first event early this summer with a SquidShow performance.

Meanwhile, the east side of the building was turned into a new outdoor mining exhibit that climbs up onto the hill (in the form of a jigback tram) and features a mining portal.

“Basically it tells the story from the beginning of prospectors … to the mining process, assaying, transportation and milling,” Bloemsma said of the exhibit.

Museum guests were given a hand-held interpretation guide to the new exhibit, which walked them through its parts.

On Friday, Bloemsma walked me through it as workers completed last-minute work.

It features a sluice station — complete with flowing water — where people can “pan” for gems and minerals in seeded mix of sands. The Powderhouse, a tiny shack with stone walls, replicates the buildings where miners used to store their explosives. An assay office holds some of the tools traditionally used to determine if a miner’s find had any value. An armature from an old local power plant — which resembles a massive, rusted peeled orange — sits up in a display area. An old ore cart on rails and can be pushed back and forth. A jigback tram climbs up the hillside, demonstrating how miners would transport materials in the mountains. And a rare portable two-stamp mill, which was used to crush ore in the milling process, rests near the front of the exhibit.

But the most fascinating piece of the exhibit is probably the Bullion Tunnel, a small structure directly behind the museum that resembles the inside of a mine. Inside the tunnel, people can find a small blacksmith shop, complete with anvil, horseshoes and tongs. Further down are displays of old blasting caps, matches and miners’ carbide lights. And at the terminus is an interactive dynamite plunger. Plunge it, and the wall of rock behind it lights up to show how miners would sequence their explosions. Picks, hammers and drill bits, rough hewn and rusty with time, line the walls.

Many of the artifacts in the exhibit were already in the museum’s collection, but the community helped to make it reality. Jerry O’Rourke donated a Mancha motor and drills, Senior Mahoney helped with interpretation and donated anvils and Larry Stevens helped with assay items. The Engbrings, Malones and Andrews families sponsored the tunnel, sluice station and ore cart, respectively, and Andrews Construction was the contractor.

The Grand Unveiling party featured Diggity Dogs, Jody’s Tamales, Ah Haa face painting, gold panning, live music by The Great Funktier and Smuggler’s beer.

— By Katie Klingsporn, Telluride Daily Planet

To stop by Telluride Historical Museum’s website, CLICK HERE