Peripheral Uses
While most mines paired up a dedicated boiler house for each hoist, the steam from those boilers were often used in a variety of applications. The steam would often be used to power other engines at the mine, such as compressors or pumps. It also was sent to radiators to heat some of the buildings.
These peripheral uses were fed by a series of steam pipes that ran underground from the boiler house out to the other buildings. Protruding from the north side of the boiler house at North Kearsarge (or at least what we think is the boiler house) was what possibly could be one of these feeder lines. It was about a half a foot in diameter and exited the buildings foundation in a shallow trench, where it was broken off after a few feet. Knowing that it would lead us to more buildings, we decided to follow it.
We headed off in the general direction the pipe was pointing, following the shallow trench for some time. Soon that too ended, but continuing on we soon came across sections of pipe sitting on the surface. Not far away we found what we were looking for - a foundation to another building. This one was almost identical to the first ruin we found. A short poor-rock wall surrounded a brick foundation in the shape of an “H”. Sticking up from the foundation at various points were iron posts. Yet another hoist building. It appeared as though our boiler fed two hoists, not just one.
But there was a few problems. This hoist was much smaller then the first, almost half the size. The space between the legs of the “H” were very close together, almost too close to hold a hoist drum of any size. Third, the outer walls were all intact, odd considering that all the hoists we have found thus far are always missing their shaft-facing wall.
There was only one way to solve it, and that was to look for the rock house / shaft house that this “hoist” serviced. Dropping off the ruins we made our way through the brush to quickly come to the old road from earlier. While the road was dirt, this section contained a concrete strip that ran across it. Looking ahead of us we could make out the looming poor rock pile - awfully close to the road. In front of it was not a rock house, but a large concrete floor of some sort.
Crossing the road we stepped up onto the floor. It was larger, and was etched into large squares. Moving around it’s edge we could make out very short poor rock walls underneath us, supporting the floor we stood on. This looked nothing like the rock house or collar house we had been accustomed to. In fact, it looked more to us like the dry - very similar to the buildings we found at Gratiot and Iroquois. This was no rock house.
That meant the second “hoist” we found was not a hoist at all. It must of been one of the peripheral engines served by the boiler house. Most likely the compressor used to power the drills underground. Either way, with the looming rock pile ahead of us we knew what we had to do next: climb it.