Steve's Journal

I went down to Tennessee this past weekend to visit Elizabeth at school.  While there, we decided to do some geocaching.  One of the geocaches I wanted to do was one called Snoopy’s Mine Blowing Experience.  In doing so, we discovered an amazing area called the Laurel-Snow Pocket Wilderness.  It apparently also used to be called the Bowater Pocket Wilderness.  While the geocache was amazing, what was more amazing was the area itself.  Named for two different waterfalls: Laurel and Snow,  80ft and 33ft respectively, the area offers miles of “moderate” hiking.  Personally, if some of those trails are “moderate” I shudder at what “difficult” would be .  I can’t wait to get back out here when there are more leaves on the trees!  Elizabeth and I took hundreds of pictures:

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Comments (2) Mar 30 2009

I finally got the RV on the road for it’s maiden voyage and started on a trip down to visit Elizabeth at school.  It was definitely a fun trip.  Be sure to check out my other posts on the adventure while we were there.  In the mean time, heres a few pictures from the trip down…

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Comments (0) Mar 25 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