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| Mining town of Bourne, OR |
I dug up this information to help me better understand the workings
of a mining town for my current work in progress.
A booming mining town isn’t a quiet place. The thud of the stamp mills could be heard
for miles long before you rode into town. Mules wore bells, burros brayed, dogs
barked. Planning mills worked to keep up with the demand for boards.
Dust in the streets when it’s dry, mud when it’s wet. Animal
dung from horses, mules and oxen. Human refuse tossed in the streets. And the fresh smell of pine from the new
buildings constructed.
The thud of the stamp mill was the heartbeat of the town. As
long as they heard the thud, thud, thud the mill was running and all was well.
The mill only stopped in emergencies.
With the whisper of gold in an area, people and freight
arrived daily. Tents and crude cabins
sprang up. There’s no running water. Water was drawn at a town well or pump.
Each household had an outhouse
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| Mine in the side of the mountain |
Prospectors take up claims up and down the river if it’s
placer mining or in the mountains if it’s hard rock mining.
First businesses sell needed items – a mercantile and a
saloon. The mercantile provides the every day necessities and the saloon
provides a place to visit, have a drink, and see a woman. Most mining towns have few women and the
respectable ones are treated like royalty.
When wives arrived they would organize gatherings. A weekly
dance with the women bringing baked food. There were so many men in a mining town all
females as long as they were big enough to dance, danced every song. On Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fourth of July,
and Labor Day the whole mine would shut down, even the mills. Everyone celebrated with food, games, horse
races and boxing matches. They had
drilling contests with one and two man teams. The winner was the person or team
who could hand-drill the deepest hole in a granite block in a named length of
time. Betting took place during the
drilling. Men practiced for days ahead of a holiday and used their own special
drill steels. Music was an essential at
the gatherings. If you were a musician you were popular.
Company boarding houses, housed the mine workers. It was
usually two story with the office, dining hall, and kitchen on the bottom floor
and the sleeping quarters upstairs. Built-in wooden bunks were shared by two
people. Each person worked a different shift.
The miners weren’t clean either. After a shift they’d set wet boots around
the wood stove and they didn’t wash often. The smell must have been enough to make nose
hairs curl. Tobacco juice mixed with mud on the floors. Pack rats and flies
were also part of a company boarding house.
The most important person in a mining camp was the cook. How
well the men ate determined if they stayed on.
This was a typical day’s meals if the company was a good one:
Oatmeal or some other hot grain cereal
Two slabs of bacon or ham
Huge pans of fried potatoes
Large pans of biscuits, refilled again
and again
Condensed milk in cans on the tbles,
some diluted in pitchers
Stewed fruit(stewed dried fruit when
fresh was unavailable)
Syrup
Preserves
Cookies
Coffee cake or doughnuts
Dozens and dozens of eggs, fried and
boiled
Huge pots of coffee
Sugar and butter on each table
Lunch (or dinner as it was called back
then) was the biggest meal of the day. The preparation started as soon as the
men finished breakfast and that was cleaned up.
Soup
Meat and gravy
Potatoes
Vegetables
Hot homemade rolls
Twenty pies (more than a quarter pie per
person)
Butter and preserves
Coffee
Supper was nearly the same as lunch but
without soups and as big a meal as dinner.
Meat and gravy
Potatoes
Vegetables
Pan after pan of cornbread
Cakes, iced and decorated on special
occasions
Butter and preserves
Coffee
Source: The Mining Camps Speak by Beth and Bill Sagstetter
Photos: Paty Jager
