Mining past and present
Local museum lets visitors delve into industry’s role in Colorado
If you ever ask yourself questions like "Where does gold come from?" "What is a stamp mill?" or "Why do we have child labor laws?" visit the Western Museum of Mining and Industry.
The museum, celebrating the 26th anniversary of its main facility Monday with discounted admission, houses a permanent exhibit of mining history in southern Colorado as well as hosting a regular stream of talks and displays devoted to the societal impacts of past and present excursions into the Earth's bounty.
At the Western Museum, situated on an old, 27-acre farm, visitors get a firsthand sense of the Industrial Revolution - the scrappy ingenuity and primordial brutality of the era's machinery, and consequently, its lifestyle. A massive, 17-ton 1895 steam engine fills the building's main room. Originally the power source for a paper mill, the engine was installed in 1979, just before the roof and walls of the museum were erected, trapping it inside.
During tours of the site, which run daily at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., the guide disappears below the machine and it rumbles to life, powered not by steam ("fire danger," said marketing coordinator Loretta Howden) but compressed air.
In the stamp mill building, down a dirt path, the museum maintains a machine used to pound and chemically fry the gold out of rocks. During demonstrations, like the one the museum has planned for its anniversary, museum workers toss chunks of rock between cast iron fists that smash the fragments to bits, emptying the pieces into baths that in the old days, would have been full of mercury.
"Also planned for the anniversary, the museum will give a gold-panning demonstration, activate some infrequently used machinery, such as the steam shovel and hoist house, and deliver a brief oral history accompanied by cake and lemonade.
"And the burros will be out," Howden said.
The museum has two rescued donkeys, named Oro and Nugget, likely descendants of mine workers. Every August, the museum hosts a birthday celebration for the burros with cake and a bluegrass band.
On Monday, they'll be in their pen nearest the main building, where visitors can browse the museum's permanent collection: A 20-minute video delves into the history of local mining, kids can dress in spelunking gear and enter a darkened mock mine or sift through sandy water for flakes of gold, a temporary exhibit examines the process of boring tunnels through mountains, and displays ask visitors to consider everyday products - such as pencils and Pepto Bismol - that include mined ingredients.
"People think they don't like mining," Howden said. "But if something doesn't grow like a crop, or isn't raised like chickens, that means it's mined."
Kate Woods, the museum's gift shop manager and historical interpreter, said Colorado owes its statehood to the rush on minerals.
"Before gold was discovered in Clear Creek, Denver didn't exist," she said.
That said, the museum avoids turning nostalgia for mining, and an acknowledgement of its continued importance, into a tourist-trap-like industry shrine. The staff is quick to point to the dark side, or at least the human toll of the industry.
Last year the museum hosted a lecture on contemporary uranium mining in Colorado.
"Land mining affects us in the 21st century. Do we need uranium mills in Colorado? I don't know, but we need to understand why we mined, why we still mine in Colorado," said executive director David Carroll.
The Industrial Revolution left a lot of questions in the aftermath of technology, he said, and discussions that came out of that resulted in things like child labor laws and restrictions on the use of mercury.
"This is a place where we can have that debate, where we can explore the past, and ask questions about the future," he said.
"We don't take a position, good or bad, on mining," Carroll said. "But in the West, this is how we live out lives, and we need to understand our lifestyle. That's what we're trying to do here."
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