Box Making and Packing
Now that the dynamite sticks have been produced, the final step in the process is boxing the dynamite up in preparation for shipping, to be sent across the peninsula to various Copper Country mines. The Packing House sat at the end of the powder line, receiving finished sticks of dynamite on hand-trucked rail cars from the shell packing houses. At first the box’s were made of wood, but later the company turned to fiber cases to save money. The boxes (wood or otherwise) were made just down the line at the box plant.
Here’s the box packing house on the right, just behind the box car. Down the line you can see the Hall Packing houses in the distance. The boxes of dynamite were loaded onto that rail car in the photo, which once full was brought down to the storage bunkers a safe distance away - pulled by horse. We were unable to find much of anything left of the packing house, however, but instead made our way down to the box making house further along.
In contrast to the sparse remains we have found so far of the various buildings at Senter, the box making plant had a considerable presence along the side of the trail. Here is the north-east corner of the building, which was sunk down into the ground a half dozen feet or so. Several window openings were scattered about the foundation walls.
Inside the walls were a series of concrete foundations and pedestals, like the one seen here. The box making machinery was most likely mounted on top of these. There were also several concrete pad set in lines in the middle of the building, probably supports for posts to hold up the roof.
More interesting then the box making house was what sat just beyond it, which you can see here in the photo. It was another small shack with a brick smokestack, just like we had seen back at the shell house.
While not as pretty as the one back at the shell house, this stack was still something to see in the middle of a wooded wasteland. Once again it was this stack which required this box plant to be set apart from the rest of the production line - stray sparks or a chimney fire would be an issue back around the Nitro. Here it was fine.
Making our way around to the side of the building, we could see that it was very small inside, with hardly any head room. I would assume that a piece of machinery went in here and nothing else. My guess would be a boiler, to either provide steam heat to the building next door or to provide steam for some other purpose.
Inside there was a concrete pit in the middle of the floor. A piece of large ductwork made its way from the chimney down into the pit. This must of been the exhaust vent for whatever operated in here. The presence of the chimney would also suggest a boiler of some type, who’s exhaust vapors went out the duct. (Get a better look with the BIG PICTURE)
At the back of the shack were these two large doors that opened to a holding tank of some type below them. My guess was that coal was stored in here, for use by the boiler. If you look at the BIG PICTURE from earlier, you can see two discharge chutes coming out of the inside back wall. Those chutes would of emptied whatever was inside this holding tank.
Before leaving, we took one last look at the chimney. As pointed out by one of my loyal readers Herb, the masons that built this thing sure put a lot of care and pride into their work. The detail here is amazing. It seems very aesthetically minded, considering very few people would ever see it.
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