I had a really cool (that's using two meanings to that word) day yesterday. I got to work and it started to snow, which was rather an impressive change in the weather considering it was in the 70s just the day before.
Then, that afternoon, I had the opportunity to take a very unique tour of Park City with a group from the Park City Historical Society and Museum. The tour started with us heading over to the Jordanelle Reservoir and meeting up at the Jordanelle Special Services District buildings where our group got outfitted with helmets, headlamps and slickers. With our group set up to get exploring, we boarded a couple of cars and and started up the tracks and into the Ontario Drain Tunnel. It was pointed out to me that this certainly was a huge step above the runaway mine train ride at Disney World because although the train wasn't a runaway this was a real mine that was a fully operational Silver Mine not all that many years ago!
It was somewhat disconcerting to see the daylight fading behind us, but what distracted me from that was the sheer volume of water that we were riding over in the train. I found out later in the tour that the drain tunnel was cut in the shape of an oval and that the tracks that our train was riding are are elevated off the bottom of the tunnel by up to four feet in places, so that when the wheels of the cars where splashing through water, the water was really deep.
After about 20 minutes, and 17,000 feet of travel, we wound up at our destination, the old Park City Silver Mine exhibit - which is about directly underneath the Stein Eriksen Lodge, although vertically much lower down! Lloyd, the guide for our group, took us around several exhibits that had been set up for the now closed mine tour as well as showing us a number areas that hadn't been part of the tour. It was very interesting to see the old mining history and to get a first hand look at what was the original engine for creating Park City. However, now it's not silver, but water which is the valued asset coming out of the Park City mines!
Lloyd then described and showed how hard rock mining was done in these mines, showing us the drill and explosives that were used. I was impressed to learn that a miner's goal was to drill out a complete set of holes (see the photo to the right) to allow for at least one blast per shift, that's a lot of drilling! We then headed back to the train and followed the signs back to daylight, with a new sense of Park City's recent mining past, and back to the snow that had fallen up in the mountains. As I said, it was a 'cool' day!
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