Ruin in the Trees
So here we were. We had found both the rockhouse, and the shaft building. We had also found the dry, a few electrical related ruins, and climbed the rock pile. We had almost did it all, except for the one missing ingredient: the hoist building.
Now hoist buildings are generally easy to find. Usually they lie in line with the shaft and rockhouse, to the east / southeast from the shaft. To make it even easier, a line of footings for the cable stands that once supported the hoist cable would lie like breadcrumbs from the shaft to the hoist. So that’s what we did – follow the breadcrumbs. What the breadcrumbs led us to – deep into the wooded area behind the rock pile – was a ruin that looked like the hoist, but later we would find out couldn’t be.
What we found looked like it sure could be a hoist building. A short foundation (only a few feet high) in the shape of an “F” was dotted with various metal rods and pipes. Sitting near it, slightly forward and to the south, was a small concrete slab that also had bolts and pipes sticking out of it. And behind that, a small brick footprint for what could have been a smokestack. This all seemed to make sense, but there was issues.
First, the outer wall - which we always found surrounding pedestals for machinery - was absent. Second, the scale was way off. Most hoists we found were a good twenty feet across, this one could not of been much more then a dozen. Whatever machine this foundation held, it would be too small for such a deep and modern mine. Then, there was the smokestack foundation itself. We had never found a smokestack next to a hoist building. Usually the steam was fed to the hoist through underground pipes from a boiler some distance away.
So the question remains; what did we find? I am sure it was a foundation for some type of equipment. The bolts along the pedestal would indicate that, as would the metal pipes also present dotting the structure. Perhaps it was a modern diesal engine, with the smokestack being used for exhaust. Or perhaps it was a much older structure, perhaps even the shaft’s original hoist before its depth required larger machinery. We didn’t know, and we still don’t know. Perhaps one of you can help us out.