Name/Title
S17.04.002Description
The Nelms underground coal mine operated by the Ohio-Pennsylvania Coal Company near Cadiz in Green Township, Harrison County, Ohio. The photograph was taken in the 1940s.
REVIEW: May have been taken by Sturgeon & Fuller in the 1940s (check this by comparison with other Sturgeon & Fuller slides in OFR-1941). Mike Hansen said that many of the gray border slides were taken by Myron T. Sturgeon.
From Douglas Crowell in an e-mail to Lisa Long on July 19, 2016: The two slides, S17.04.002_NelmsMine.jpg and S17.04.003_NelmsMine.jpg, are from the Nelms No. 1 mine (HN-068, also HN-055, HN-062, and HN-009). The Nelms No. 1 mine was a shaft mine with a vertical opening of 450 feet. This mine was operated by the Youghiogheny & Ohio (Y&O) Coal Company from 1928 to its abandonment in 1979. Slide S17.04.002 shows a hoisting-shaft headframe (the taller building on the right with two hoisting sheaves at the top) and a railroad-loading coal tipple (the lower, wider building on the left with railroad cars underneath it). The hoisting-shaft headframe is where miners and equipment are lowered into and raised out of the mine and where the coal is hoisted out of the mine. The tipple is where the coal is crushed, separated from its impurities, and sorted into various size fractions e.g. lump, nut, egg, pea, and refuse. A good illustration of both buildings is shown on page 44 in OGS Bulletin 72. Slide 17.04.003 is a close up view of the tipple (shown in the previous slide) showing the same railroad cars underneath loaded into different size fractions. Also shown in both views is a truck loaded with coal for local (home?) use. I cannot see any of the license plates of the nearby vehicles to determine an exact date, but early 1940s seems like a good guess based on the style of cars shown. An interesting side note in regard to the Nelms No. 1 mine is that on November 29, 1940 31 miners perished from an explosion underground. The brick building in the foreground of S17.04.002 is likely a company office where company records and maps of the mine were kept and updated. Also, there are brick buildings shown behind the hoisting shaft and tipple. I would assume that one of them was a machine shop for equipment repairs and another a wash house where the miners changed clothes and cleaned up after their time in the mine.
This slide image included in the USGS National Digital Catalog for NGGDPP Grant G15AP00115 in FY2015.Context
Built surface structures with cars in foreground. Nelms underground coal mine near Cadiz, Ohio.