Early mining consisted of back-breaking manual labour done largely by men looking to strike it rich in the Klondike. Mining was done using hand-shovels, picks, wheelbarrows, hand steels, hammers, buckets and sticks of dynamite. Shafts would be sunk into the ground and ore would be handpicked out of the shafts and put in stockpiles waiting to be transported to smelters in Washington. Some bigger operations could afford steam plants to run power drills and pumps.
One issue always present in mining is water that accumulates in the mines. This water would either be pumped out using steam powered pumps or one bucket at a time by miners in the shafts. An example of this was with the Pueblo Mine that was known as a “wet” mine. During normal operations the mine would have 500-600 gallons of water per minute entering the mine.
In the winters, fires would be built to melt the ground so miners could continue to mine during the long winter months. The handpicked ore would be put into stockpiles waiting for the spring melt to be transported by ship to smelters in Washington.
In later years, new investment along with advancements in mining technologies and techniques would see an increase in the amount of ore that would be mined out of the Copperbelt. By 1907, nearly 4000 tons of copper had been mined and sent to smelters in the south.
The mine that was the most lucrative in the copper belt was the Pueblo Mine. By 1916, the Pueblo was at the peak of its production extracting ore at a value of $763, 586.
The worst mining accident in the Yukon occurred at the Pueblo mine in the spring of 1917. A cave-in at the 200–400 foot level left 9 miners trapped. An 85 foot drift through solid granite reached 3 of the miners within 72 hours. Rescue work continued for 8 more days, but it was deemed too dangerous, leaving 6 miners entombed in the mine. Investigation of the accident found that due to the mine being a ‘wet mine’, underground watercourses caused water to accumulate and create great pressure, which caused the weakest section of the mine to collapse. A plaque commemorating the 6 miners stands near the Fish Lake Rd turn off along the Alaska Highway.
(Dobrowolsky et al., 1993, p.7,10)
