Topic: Mercury Mine

[Bryan]

Last week I went to look at a site in Idaho that we may be doing some work at soon.  This wasn’t my first time at this site, I did some work there back in 1998.  The site is a former Mercury mine that operated from 1921 to 1958, it has been abandoned for 60 years now.  The problem with this site is the mercury that is being released into a salmon spawning stream that flows into the Salmon River followed by the Snake River then the Columbia River and finally the Pacific Ocean. 

The mine is located in an extremely remote location so whatever we do there is difficult and expensive.  It sits at an elevation of 7,500 feet and the road in is washed out in places plus it’s missing a bridge over a large stream.  Before we can do any work on the site we will have to do a lot of road repair and bridge building.  The reason for taking this trip in May is because it’s during peak snow melt when the most Mercury is being released into the stream.  We needed to asses exactly what is going on to release the mercury into the stream. 

The closest town to the mine is Yellow Pine, Idaho with a population of about 32.  They have a tavern some homes and a general store that is no longer in business.  We were able to rent a lodge while we were up there.  To get to Yellow Pine it’s a 3 hour drive on a winding mountain road, much of which is not paved.  The mine would be over an hour further from Yellow Pine if the road was passable.  To get there for this visit we hired a helicopter to meet us at the Johnson Creek Airport a few miles from Yellow Pine.  The forecast called for thunderstorms in the afternoon so there was some concern about getting out of there at the end of the day.  I packed a backpack with some food, water, warm clothes, snow shoes and my Leica IIIf loaded with a roll of Kosmo Foto Mono.  The lens was an Elmar 5cm f/3.5 with a yellow filter.  The film was developed in beer.

The first photo is early morning just before we departed the Johnson Creek Airport.  The second photo is the landing site at the mine.  The helicopter pilot was a former Vietnam Huey pilot does a lot of heli-ski trips during the winter up in the Canadian Rockies so we were in good hands.  The helicopter is a Bell 205A-1 which is a civilian version of the Huey he flew in Vietnam. 

[Bryan]

The mine sits in a small valley near the top of Cinnabar Peak, on the East side of the valley there is the ore processing building, the mine adits and several building associated with the operation.  The the following photos are from that side of the valley.

[Bryan]

On the West side of the valley is housing for the mine workers and the office for the mine.  The first photo is the office the others are cabins and a lodge.  Very little has changed with these buildings in the 20 years since I was last up there.

[cs1]

Thanks for sharing this essay. It's a very nice documental writeup. The photos are very atmospheric and convey a lot of the loneliness and secludedness of the place. It's also quite scary how much influence an abandoned mine can have on the environment.

[Bryan]

Thanks cs1, it doesn't get much more secluded than that place.  A great deal of the environmental work we do on the west coast is on former mine sites.  Mercury mines are some of the worst.  When I left Yellow Pine I drove directly to another Mercury Mine in Oregon where I will be spending much of my summer. 

[MiguelCampano]

Great shots. Very moody.

I remember back in Venezuela, visiting the illegal gold mining operations in the Amazon and how seeing they used mercury to get as much gold as possible. And how corrupt the newly formed "guardians of the revolution" (partisan militias) were, in aiding in the transport, processing and disposal of mercury (in the river streams, nonetheless), for a cut of the profits.

[Bryan]

Thanks Miguel, they used to use mercury for gold extraction in the US.  I had to clean out a tunnel at a mine in California that was contaminated with mercury.  It was a placer mine that ran a sluice box through a tunnel, they would capture the mercury/gold at the lower end of the tunnel and cook off the mercury.  Much of the mercury got into the Sacramento River along with the silt from the placer mining.  I can only imagine what goes on in some countries and I'm sure much of it is not being cleaned up. 

[calbisu]

Thanks for sharing this essay. It's a very nice documental writeup. The photos are very atmospheric and convey a lot of the loneliness and secludedness of the place. It's also quite scary how much influence an abandoned mine can have on the environment.

Indeed, I enjoyed both looking at the pictures and reading it. I think it´s a privilege when because our work we are able to visit interesting sites and meet people that we would not do otherwise.

C.

[Indofunk]

I don't know how I missed this the first time, but that's a fascinating story/history lesson, and great pictures! Thanks!

[Bryan]

Thanks Satish and Calbisu.  My work takes me to some very interesting places as well as some very undesirable places but there’s always photo opportunities. 

[02Pilot]

As a set these give a good sense of place - the remoteness, the isolation, the cold - and certainly convey both the decay and the seeming timelessness of it. What I would love to see are some of the interiors of these structures, which I think would add something to the understanding of the lives people lived working up there.

[Bryan]

As a set these give a good sense of place - the remoteness, the isolation, the cold - and certainly convey both the decay and the seeming timelessness of it. What I would love to see are some of the interiors of these structures, which I think would add something to the understanding of the lives people lived working up there.

Thanks 02Pilot.  There's not much left inside the buildings, whatever may have been there was either removed when the mine shut down or has since been stolen.  If I remember correctly my co-workers removed some chemicals from the laboratory back in 1996.  I remember looking in one of the larger buildings and seeing about 6 inches of rat droppings on the floor, after that I had no interest to go inside.  It's also kind of dangerous because they are unstable, some of them are sitting on rusted out metal drums as a foundation.  You can see the interior of the cabin below, that's what most of them look like inside.  Someone stole the siding off that building, they probably wanted the weathered rustic looking wood for a project.  I'm sure it was pretty hard living up there with a very short season without snow.  I can't imagine what the journey back to civilization would have been like back when the mine was operating. 

[02Pilot]

Well, while it's a bit disappointing that the buildings have been stripped, there's a certain appropriateness to them being so. Even some shots through doors or windows with light streaming into empty spaces might make for an interesting counterpoint to the exterior shots. Dark buildings amid white snow, light pouring into dark spaces. Don't know if it would work or if it's what you're after, but I think that's what I'd be investigating when the opportunity arises.

[johnha]

Thanks for sharing these images and story. Looks like a hard life, I can only imagine what it would have been like to live & work there. I wish my work would take me to such interesting places (not that I'd like to decontaminate mercury mines for a living!).

[Bryan]

Well, while it's a bit disappointing that the buildings have been stripped, there's a certain appropriateness to them being so. Even some shots through doors or windows with light streaming into empty spaces might make for an interesting counterpoint to the exterior shots. Dark buildings amid white snow, light pouring into dark spaces. Don't know if it would work or if it's what you're after, but I think that's what I'd be investigating when the opportunity arises.

Unfortunately I actually had to work while I was there, my opertunities to take photos were limited.  With the weather getting bad we had to hurry out of there while we could, I didn’t want to walk out of that place.  While I was trudging around in snow shoes I would pull my camera out and get off a few shots here and there.  There are a few buildings I would have liked to get closer to for some better shots.  I didn’t get any shots of the large dormitory because it was a bit of a climb from where we were working.  That building would have made for some great shots. 

johnah, any day I’m outside working I’m much happier than being in an office, it doesn’t matter where they send me.  That’s why I studied Geology in the first place, to avoid a desk job.  Even though a large part of my job is at a desk I do get to go out and play in the dirt a lot.  Decontaminating a Mercury mine isn’t so bad, it’s mostly moving tailings around from one place to another. 

[02Pilot]

Work requirements are such an annoyance.