My current release starts out in a mining town. After
researching the type of mining town, I concluded it was one with a stamp mill.
I’d researched this type of mining before for my book, Miner in Petticoats,
book three of my Halsey Brother Series. This time I was researching for a book
to be included in a Kindle Worlds series. To be exact it is part of Debra
Holland’s Montana Sky Kindle Worlds Series. She’d set up Morgan’s Crossing a
mining town two days from her original Sweetwater Springs setting.
Morgan’s Crossing is small, with a boarding house for
the miners, a store, saloon, community hall, cabins, and tents. Of course the
man who owns the mine has a nice, large home.
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| Boulder Historical Society |
My character in the book is a mine guard. He lives in
a guard shack by the mine with three other men. Other buildings needed with
hard rock mining were a mill to make the lumber to hold up the tunnels dug and
blasted in the rock, a stamp mill to crush the rock and release the gold, a
livery to house the horses that ran the machinery and hauled the loads of ore,
a machinist to take care of all the mechanical parts, and an assay office to
determine the grade of the gold found.
A booming mining town wasn’t a quiet place. The thud of the stamp mills could be heard
for miles long before a person rode into town. The streets were either dusty or
muddy depending on the weather. And most mining towns weren’t the people’s
pride and joy. There were few women and the men worked long hours. All they
wanted was food and a bed when they weren’t working. How they lived didn’t
matter to them.
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| Western Mining History |
Dust in the streets in it’s dry, mud when it’s wet.
Animal dung from horses, mule sand oxen. Human refuse tossed in the
streets. And the fresh smell of pine
from the new buildings constructed.
Tents and crude cabins were the usually housing in a
mining are that was growing. Water was drawn at a town well or pump. Each
household had an outhouse behind it.
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. 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.
I tried to evoke some of this color into, Isaac:
Letters of Fate.
Historical western filled with steamy
romance and the rawness of a growing country.
Alamayda Wagner’s life has left her
cynical, but also vigilant, and that’s what propels her to Morgan’s Crossing,
Montana in order to uncover the secrets her father took to his grave. She
quickly discovers her only hope includes trusting Isaac Corum. That soon proves
to be expensive, and not just financially.
The last thing Isaac Corum needs or wants is a snooty
woman telling him he didn’t do enough to save her father, which is what
her letter implied. He’d helped the man more than most people would have, and
swears he won’t go out of his way like that again. He’ll meet her at the
Sweetwater Springs train station, deliver her father’s belongings, and send her
back the way she came.
But, dang it all, the woman doesn’t do
a single blasted thing she’s told, and Isaac can’t just sit back
and let her go traipsing off into the mountains alone…
Award-winning author Paty Jager and her husband raise
alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. She not only writes the western lifestyle,
she lives it. All Paty’s work has Western or Native American elements in them
along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Her penchant for research
takes her on side trips that eventually turn into yet another story.
You can learn more about
Paty at
Photos: https://www.facebook.com/westernmininghistory
and Carnegie Branch Library for Local History, Boulder Historical Society Collection
In 1879 the mine was paying $50,000 a month. For a while, Ed Schieffelin hauled the bullion from his mine to Tucson, but got restless and went to prospecting again.
In 1880 he and his brother sold out for $600,000 -- $300,000 each -- and he went to prospecting farther off. When their third partner sold out for a real fortune later, he subtracted $300,000 for himself from the sum and divided the remainder equally between himself and the two Schieffelins. 
Alamayda Wagner’s life has left her
cynical, but also vigilant, and that’s what propels her to Morgan’s Crossing,
Montana in order to uncover the secrets her father took to his grave. She
quickly discovers her only hope includes trusting Isaac Corum. That soon proves
to be expensive, and not just financially. 
In 1864, John Cowan, Daniel Jackson Miller, John Crab, and
Robert Stanley discovered gold in what is present day Helena’s Main Street. It didn’t take long for word to get out and
the population grew to 3000 and businesses started popping up all through the
gulch. 
