This conference was in Gunnison, CO this year and turnout was pretty good, with a very large number from Colorado. There were some interesting presentations including one by Rick Trujillo on the Camp Bird Mine. Rick is a geologist who actually worked at the Camp Bird early in his career. He said that Tom Walsh…

Amazon.ie is now active and the book is available.

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…

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…

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…

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…