Recent Activities -Cobalt, October, 2010 Trip, Page Two
We spent a solid day in the mines at South Lorrain Township. We also visited the Cobalt Mining Museum, in Cobalt. There are some fantastic displays of silver and artifacts there, if you are ever in town! Here are a few pictures from South Lorrain Township and of the Cobalt Mining Museum.
This interesting display shows some superb leaf and crystallized silver specimens positioned around the Cobalt mayor's chain of office. When required, the chain of office is removed from the museum for official duties of the mayor and replaced when not in use. Note the specimen in the top left hand corner? It is a beautifully crystallized specimen of silver from the Mann Mine, Gowganda. I'll show you a close-up in the next picture.
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I got a kick out of this antique sign in the museum. I worked in the explosives business for many years.
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One interesting display at the Cobalt Mining Museum is this collage of pictures of many of the headframes that once stood in the Cobalt Camp. Many have fallen down, burned or been torn down, now.
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This is all that remains of the once mighty Keeley Mine. The headframe has toppled over, now. Lots of rock dump right beside it!
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If you sit on the Keeley Mine dump to eat lunch, this is the scenery in the fall across the old tailings pond. A nice combination of conifers, birch, maple and ash.
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Here is a close-up of that superb Mann Mine piece. About a foot across. Wow!
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Righ across the road from the museum is a monument to the many mines and their managers that produced silver in Cobalt over the years. Over 100 of them!
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The Cobalt Mining Museum had many interesting displays. Here is a working model of a headframe, complete with shive wheel and moving cage. You are the hoist! Lots of other artifacts throughout the museum.
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Here's Roger Smirle on the tailgate of his SUV with our haul of silver and arsenides in the back. Many will not turn out to be much but you really don't know untill they are cleaned up and trimmed or sawn. They all produced a signal on the metal detectors, though!
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We ran into this fellow, a ruffed grouse on the way into the Wetlauffer Mine. We didn't see any people at all!
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The Cobalt Mining Museum is loaded with old photos of some of the old mining operations from their heydays. Pictures such as this one of the Temiskaming Mine show that each was like a small town with mill, headframe, bunkhouses offices, shops and many other buildings.
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