Steve's Journal

While in the Dayton, TN area visiting my daughter at school, one of the sites we visited was the Laurel Falls Pocket Wilderness for some geocaching and hiking.  You can read more information on this geocache at the geocaching.com listing:  GCPMV2 Over the Bridge.   You can also see more images in my post on the Laurel Snow Pocket Wilderness.  Here’s some pictures of the area around the cache:

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Comments (0) Mar 30 2009

While in the Dayton, TN area visiting my daughter at school, one of the sites we visited was the Laurel Falls Earthcache.  For the uninitiated, an Earthcache is a Geocache without a container.  Its intended to be a point of interest, generally with some significance to the Earth.  I’ve also seen these referred to as “Waymarks” or “Waymarking”.  As a type of geocache, logging an earthcache generally requires answering some questions to prove you were there, and perhaps also providing a picture.  You can read more information on the earthcache at the geocaching.com listing: GC14T2M Laurel Falls Earthcache.  You can also see more images in my post on the Laurel Snow Pocket Wilderness.  Here’s some pictures of the area around the earthcache:

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Comments (0) Mar 30 2009

As interested as I am in history and historical sites, I couldn’t wait to get back to my PC to do some research on the Richland Mine and other mines in the area.  If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, check out my post on a recent geocache called Snoopy’s Mine Blowing Experience.

In my research on the mine, I learned that there were a number of other mines in the area, one of which suffered a similar fate to the Richland Mine, namely the Nelson Mine, which according to maps, is nearby.  I also found:

The NY Times article on the disaster (be sure to click the link to see the full article) and

a transcription of an article from the  Evening Herald Syracuse New York 1901-05-28.

(I’ve printed all  of these to PDF in case the links should expire…)

I also found another article apparently from Trenton Evening Times, Trenton NJ 21 Dec 1895 on (I think) another mine explosion in the area.  I thought this might have been the Nelson Mine, but it isn’t cited in the article, so I’m not sure.  If it is the Nelson Mine, there’s an apparent date discrepancy.  This article on the Nelson Mine from the Ticonderoga Sentinel New York 1902-04-03 puts the Nelson Mine disaster in 1902, after the 1901 Richland Mine disaster.  Perhaps the 1895 disaster was a different mine still.

Fascinating stuff.  In another post, I’ll put up some maps of the mines in the area.   One of the things I noticed was that the actual location of the Richland Mine entrance doesn’t match the USGS topo maps of the area… but that’s a subject for my next post!

** Addendum – while poking around some more, I found a digitized copy of the book:

Comments (0) Mar 24 2009