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Orphan Girl
Mine Yard Exhibits
There is a lot more to mining
than a hole in the ground.
 The
Orphan Girl Mine Yard contains sixty-six primary
exhibits and a multitude of smaller bits and
pieces from the mining industry. The smelter car
shown here would have moved slag or molten metal
from one part of the smelter to another. It's
about 20 feet from the ground to the lip of the
bucket.
 These
are not models, folks. The World Museum of
Mining is a BIG museum. This LeTourneau truck
was used in the Berkeley Pit, where it hauled
70-ton loads of ore and waste rock. The ore
trucks there had capacities up to 150 tons — a
lot more than the half or three-quarter ton ore
cars typically used in underground mining. It
was the economy provided by this scale, as well
as the relative ease of open pit mining, that
led to the demise of underground mining.
Fans of
mining will enjoy recognizing old friends and
spotting unique examples of specialized mining
technology.
 Those
less well acquainted with mining will have a
good time trying to figure out just what this or
that gadget is used for. This strange machine
was a cleaning and repair platform for flat
cable. Such cable was made from interwoven wires
and could be repaired on site; the later,
stronger round cables were made in one piece in
foundries — if one of THEM broke, a new cable,
possibly a mile long, would have to be ordered
from Chicago or elsewhere.
For more
information, you can peek inside the mine yard
equipment guide we give you when you enter the
museum.
 There
you will learn about smelter cars, ore trucks,
cable cleaners, the Emma Mine's flat cable hoist
engine and all the rest. The Emma hoist was
state of the art for its time — it was exhibited
at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. It was
driven by steam engines, like most of the
equipment in the early 20th Century, and this is
one of the few surviving examples.
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