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Silicosis and Silica News - Return to Menu
Tonopah's Miners Died Young
NYE COUNTY HISTORY
SILICA IN HARDROCK MINES BROUGHT DEATH EARLY, OFTEN
By BOB MCCRACKEN
February 3, 2006 - Mining on the Western frontier was a dangerous occupation - one of the most dangerous in the world. A miner's life was not worth much. If a man was injured or killed in a mining accident, he could easily be replaced.
In his book "The Hardrock Miners"(1974), Richard Lingenfelter described some of the dangers: "A single careless prop, a defective bolt or timber, a carelessly swung hammer, an improperly loaded charge, any neglect or lack of thoroughness, any laziness or ignorance was almost certain to bring injury and possibly even death."
There was (and remains) another grave source of danger to hardrock miners around the world, including the American West. This danger comes from the air they breathed. Although silica makes up a large proportion of the earth's crust, rock formations vary in the amount of silica they contain; some have a high silica content; others, low. Rock formations also vary in their water content. Some mines are very wet, others are bone dry. Wet mines in low silica-type rock formations produce relatively little silica dust. Dry mines in rock types high in silica produce great quantities of silica-laden dust. Before modern safety measures were implemented, men working in the latter-type mines breathed in considerable amounts of silica dust and typically contracted a disease known as silicosis.
When silica dust particles are inhaled into the lungs, some become lodged and set up an irritation that destroys lung tissue. (Under a microscope, a particle of silica dust appears glassy with many sharp edges). The more dust inhaled, the more lung tissue destroyed. Miners with silicosis gradually lose their ability to breathe and are vulnerable to pneumonia and tuberculosis. At autopsy, the ash of lung tissue from a silicosis victim can be as high as 30 percent silica.
Tonopah's mines were among the worst in the West for silicosis. Anyone who spent any time working underground at Tonopah was bound to have at least a touch of "miner's consumption," or the "puff," as silicosis was sometimes called. Silicosis was also known as the "Tonopah Death" and could kill a man in six months. Even women, children, dogs, and cats in Tonopah sometimes got silicosis caused by inhaling the dust blowing off mine dumps in town and miners bringing it home on their "diggers" - their work clothes. Drillers, muckers, and chute-pullers had the greatest exposure to dust, and smoking was said to compound its deadly effects. (Smoking had the same effect on lung cancer among uranium miners).
One tunnel deep in the Mizpah Mine had dust several inches thick on its floor. There was a prevailing air current in the tunnel and if a miner walked into the current, his dust exposure was minimal. If, however, he walked with his back to the draft, he soon could not see the light from his carbide lamp.
Norman Coombs (I knew him as "Curly") was born in Tonopah in 1914. Both of his parents were from Cornwall in England. Cornishmen had worked in the tin mines of Cornwall for centuries and were highly skilled and dedicated miners. They were employed in mines throughout the American West, including Tonopah. They were the cream of the crop when it came to mining skills.
Curly's father, Oswald Coombs, came to Tonopah in 1903, returned to Cornwall and married Norman's mother, Lilly Glidden, and brought her to Tonopah in 1911. Curly grew up in Tonopah and spent his life as a miner. He was my go-to man when I had a mining question, especially on Tonopah or Round Mountain when I was writing the Nye County history books. Curly and I used to talk about miners and how they lived and died.
A miner's life was hard work. Work was his existence; it was all he ever thought about. This was especially true of Tonopah's Cornish miners. In the early days, miners worked long hours seven days a week. Eventually, they went to having Sundays off. Oswald Coombs worked 11 years at the Ohio Mine in Tonopah and didn't miss a shift. Curly once worked 11 months straight seven days per week and missed only two shifts. Round Mountain was always a seven-day-week operation, according to Coombs.
Curly said Cornish miners (known, in the vernacular, as "Cousin Jacks,") didn't really care too much about life. "Nobody would who worked underground," he said. "You can't have much value for life and go down in that place in the first place. So they didn't think anything of death ... Most of them would be lucky to make 40. If you didn't get killed by accidents, the goddamn dust'd kill you."
When a miner was injured, he frequently did his best to avoid going to the doctor. "When I've been hurt and had broken fingers and stuff," Curly said, "I'd fix them myself because when you'd go to the doctor, most of the time they told you to lay off and you couldn't work on account of the insurance. But you could work with a broken finger or something."
Sometimes when a man was hurt badly enough he didn't do anything about it. A miner didn't want to be a cripple. He would let death have its way or he might take cyanide, which was available. "All you needed was one pellet and you'd just touch it to your tongue," Curly said.
Occasionally, miners in Tonopah would cough out their diseased silica-ridden lungs in a dramatic expiration of their life. Curly said victims expelled masses of pink, foam-like matter from what remained of their lungs in a dying cough. At other times, miners just stopped breathing. "They would be in the barbershop and the [barber] would go to wake them up after he had the towel on them and they'd be dead." They looked like they had dozed off, which they often did due to lack of oxygen. Park benches were placed around town so miners could rest when walking.
In Tonopah there were pestilence houses located behind the hospital for men whose silicosis had gone into TB. But they were not solemn, morbid places. Curly said, "You'd go over there and Jeez, you didn't think you were in a place where people were getting ready to die; they'd be laughing and joking and everything."
Curly's father, Oswald, died with his boots on. He had silicosis and knew he wasn't going to last long. He told Curly's brother in letters he was going to "do himself in - either crawl out under a sagebrush" or down a local shaft. When he didn't show up at the boardinghouse for a day or two, the family was notified. Curly figured his father had gone into the West Tonopah shaft, which had carbolic gas; this was a mine Oswald knew well because he had worked there.
Nye County Sheriff Bill Thomas said he wasn't going into that mine to recover Oswald's body because the timber in the collar set was badly rotted. Besides, the mine was in Esmeralda County. The sheriff told Curly, "[If] you go down there, instead of being one [body] down there, it'd probably be two." Anyway, he said, "What if he is down there? It's the way he wanted to go ... What more befitting gravestone [than] a gallows frame over a miner's grave?" Moreover, Oswald had hated morticians. They wouldn't get him this way.
A few years later, around 1940, a man had presumably repaired the collar of the shaft and was stealing fan pipe and electric wiring from the West Tonopah. Down on the 105-foot level, he found the dried-up body of a man sitting on a landing. He was hunched over and had black curly hair. The authorities removed the body and took it to Goldfield. It was buried in the Goldfield Cemetery. It was the old Cousin Jack - Oswald Coombs, Curly's father. The morticians got him in the end.
McCracken is the author of A History of Pahrump, Nevada and 11 other books about Nye County published by the Nye County Press. Send questions and comments to rdmassociates@yahoo.com.
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