Black Gold: Presentations by Mike Howe, Duane Wamre, & Isabelle Howe
“The more we study about the coal mines in and around Adams County, the less we know,” one committee member said recently. “So much is yet to be discovered.”
For example, did you know . . . South Dakota paid $17,000 for 200 acres of farm land north of Haynes, ND, so that it would have a coal source close to a transportation source, in this case, the Milwaukee Railroad line at Haynes, ND. Run as an underground mine beginning in the 1920s, it was known as the South Dakota State Mine in North Dakota. After Jack Fitzgerald bought it in 1936, it was known as the Clermont Mine. Many still call it the “Haynes Mine.”
Its main coal vein was 300 ft wide x 14 ft thick, cut at diagonals across the land. Two “drifts” or entries were within ¾ of a mile or so, allowing side room extensions to follow the coal veins. Horses pulled coal cars to the entrance where a cable lifted the cars to the tipple. As the tipple dropped, the coal chunks passed over screens into rail cars which then moved south to the main rail line. Coal from this mine was considered superior quality lignite, marketed in four types, premium jump, mine run, steam coal and stoker coal taken out by 40 workers or so in the cold months; fewer workers in the summer.
During its years of operation, it produced about 500,000 tons of lignite. The mine had a power house, a tipple for loading freight cars, a coal chute, a round house, an office, a boarding house and kitchen, a rooming house, a bathhouse, an ice house, a garage and a stable. The SD Mining Commission also allowed for six or so private dwellings for miners and their families when it was the South Dakota State Mine.
Fascinating, right? Learn even more at the Dakota Buttes Historical Society/Museum’s special program, Labor Day, Monday, September 4, beginning at 12:30 pm MDT. The first speaker will be Hettinger’s own, Michael Howe, Environmental Engineer, North Dakota Public Service Commission, Bismarck, ND. Duane Wamre, retired land surveyor at Kadrmas, Lee & Jackson, Dickinson, formerly of Haynes, ND, is the second featured speaker, followed by Isabel Deavey Howe’s real-life, personal remembrances of growing up at a coal mine. Following the program, a light lunch will be available in building 2.
All in all, it’s a memorable way to spend Labor Day, learning about the labor of these thousands of people who lived at, worked for, or ran some of the highly successful coal mines in and around Adams County, ND.
