• The Great Flume Ride of 1875

    I was recently reminded of a great story about the Bonanza firm in a book called ‘Sierra Stories’ that I borrowed from the Morgan Hill library. One of the companies that the Mackay, Fair, Flood and O’Brien group owned was the Pacific Wood, Lumber and Flume Co. This entity harvested timber in the eastern Sierras…

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  • Des Cowman

    Irish mining historian Des Cowman passed away on December 20. Des was a high school history teacher in Tramore who took a great interest in local history especially the copper mining that took place in Bunmahon on the Waterford coast in the 19th century. He wrote numerous books and articles and was a key operative…

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  • Hans Muessig Comstock Presentation

    There was a very nice presentation by Hans Muessig to the Mining History Association on the Comstock in November that is now available on YouTube. It has the rather long title of ‘Re-examining the legacy of the Comstock: Miners, Mills, Saloons and Assessments’. Hans did quite a bit of basic research on the social fabric…

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  • The Ross Family

    One of the joys of chasing down the history of Irish miners is you always know there are some you overlooked and it is wonderful to find some more. Such is the case with John J Ross and his son Will in the Wisconsin village of Linden. Linden is about 6 miles NW of Mineral…

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  • Tara Mines Update

    The Irish Times had a brief article last week about the closure (and recent reopening) of the Bolinden owned Tara Mines lead zinc mine in County Meath. Apparently monies to the tune of 3.8Million Euro were provided to Bolinden by the Irish Government during the shutdown as part of a general EU sponsored support for…

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  • CRH Update

    CRH stock has been doing well since it changed its primary listing to the NYSE earlier thsi year and currently trades at a 19.3 price to earnings ratio. They just announced that CEO Albert Manifold is stepping down at the end of the year and he will be replaced by another financial man, CFO Jim…

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