With growth came secondary and tertiary businesses. Metal mining also sparked population growth in Utah. In addition to introducing new industries and technology, a large amount of labor was needed to work in the mines, mills, and smelters. Mining companies sought this labor at a time when southern and eastern Europeans as well as Japanese were immigrating into the United States as part of the mass migration of the period from the s to the s.
The social dynamics associated with immigrant peoples, their interactions, and the communities they formed were crucial accompaniments to mining and as such cannot be separated from the industry itself. Northern Europeans, such as the Irish, Welsh, and Cornish, arrived in the metal towns first, followed by southern and eastern Europeans, Japanese, and Mexicans. The Chinese, finished with the business of railroad building after , funneled into mining towns such as Park City, where memories of China Town and China Bridge still continue.
Mining and smelter towns alike contained varying degrees of ethnic diversity, producing tensions and labor strife.
Nativism—antiforeign sentiment, bigotry, and racism—existed in Utah, and erupted most evidently in metal-and coal-mining regions. Metal mining in Utah, as in other locales, reacted to the vagaries of the economy.
Upswings and downturns created periods of optimism and pessimism. The Great Depression of the s affected the industry greatly, causing production to plummet. However, World War II caused the demand for metals to rise, rejuvenating the industry.
The quest for uranium and accompanying minerals has historical roots in Utah, and the industry of the late s and s rested upon prior experience in the fields of prospecting, mining, and processing.
The earliest users of uranium ore in Utah were Native Americans who used it for paints. Initial Utah uranium mining began in the s and s on a small scale, with ore shipped to France and Germany in for use in the forming of salts and oxides as colorants for ceramics and dyes, in the manufacture of glass and pottery, and as aids in photography and steel plating.
By radium had been isolated from the mineral, and carnotite had been found and identified. The eastern and southeastern regions near the basin margins of the Green, Grand, and Colorado rivers in Utah contain deposits of uranium.
Market demands grew for vanadium and radium, which are found in uranium. By nearly tons of uranium were mined annually in Colorado and Utah. World War I sharpened the demand, as vanadium was used as a steel-hardening agent, and radium found a use as an illumination agent for watch faces, compasses, gunsights, and airplane dials. Nearly all the known deposits were located in the United States, and the market demand was high.
Production slowed during the depression. Of more permanent significance were the rich ore finds of radium in the Belgian Congo in , and of vanadium in Peru.
These countries came to dominate the market. Between and the production of uranium in Utah and the West proved negligible. Charles Charlie Steen reigned as the most well known of the uranium bonanza kings. Gilsonite, a lightweight, glossy black, bituminous asphaltite, is the primary hydrocarbon mined in Utah. The coal would then be wound up to the surface in a similar way to getting water out of a well.
Once a bell pit mine became too dangerous to be mined further, due to the risk of roof collapse, water build up or the build up of gases, the mine would be abandoned. Another mine shaft would then be sunk further along the surface to mine more coal from further along the seam. This would continue, and many areas would have a cluster of bell pit mines. As underground mines became bigger, the danger of roof cave-ins became more and more apparent.
This led to the method of room and pillar mining. So instead of abandoning a bell pit mine when it got too big to hold itself, pillars of coal would be left un-mined to act as supports. Room and pillar mining was a great idea, and methods similar to this are still used in different mining practices today.
Although there was a Sea-coal Lane in London as early as , coal was not welcomed as an alternative to wood as a domestic fuel. Newcastle built up a thriving trade in coal during the 14th century. The first recorded shipment to London was in , when Thomas Migg took wine from London to Berwick in the Welfare, and returned with coals from Newcastle.
By the port was shipping about 15, tons a year, but this did not rise substantially for another years. As well as the English coastal trade this included substantial exports to the Continent, mainly for use in smelting, building, smoking fish, and brewing. The main sales were to France, Flanders, and Zeeland, and in there were foreign sailings of coal ships from Newcastle to 39 different ports, the two main ones being Veere in Zeeland, and Kampen in Holland.
In the 16th century there was a dramatic expansion of coal-mining on Tyneside. The increasing shortage of wood in England for fuel and ship-building, especially in Elizabethan times, and a grudging acceptance of coal as a substitute fuel, led to a rapid growth of demand on the London market.
The prohibitive cost of land-transport of coal meant the riverside mines of Tyneside, with sea-transport to London, became the main source. The Church and monasteries had owned many of the coal-bearing lands in Durham and Tyneside, and they had restricted output, but after the Dissolution in the s and increasing royal control of the Church, these lands came into the hands of commercially-minded entrepreneurs, willing to invest capital and take risks for profit.
When the Prior of Tynemouth leased out his Elswick mines in , he limited output to 31 tons a day, but when Henry Anderson later leased them from the Crown, there were no such restrictions.
The bulk of the coal came from 20 to 25 collieries on both sides of the Tyne west of Newcastle. On the north there were pits around Elswick, Benwell, Denton, and Newburn, and around Gateshead and Whickham on the south. Here the coal seams were close to the surface, but an overland haul of three miles could add 60 per cent. The mining expansion was mainly in terms of deeper shafts, most over 15 fathoms deep, and drainage of water from the pits was helped by the new German pumping techniques.
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