The Charcoal Industry in Nevada and Eastern California - By Stanley Paher
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The charcoal industry originated in Europe where it was associated with smelting, especially in northern Italy and southern Switzerland. Both there and in this nation the demand for charcoal paralleled the industrial revolution from about 1760 well into the 19th century. In the years around 1800 in Italy charcoal burners became a political force where they formed a secret revolutionary society known as the Carbonari. In the industrial states of the northeast, early iron making and charcoal production developed hand-in-hand, and the commodity by the mid-19th century was commonly used in the mining West, especially in Colorado, Utah and Nevada.
Users of charcoal for fuel included laundries, cafes, hotels, assay offices, and dwellings. Charcoal fueled furnaces that produced pig iron, lead and copper. It saw usage by the Central Pacific Railroad after 1867 and in Nevada mining districts where lead-silver ore had to be smelted, notably Eureka, Tybo, Ward and Bristol and somewhat on the Comstock Lode. The charcoal provided a hot burning fuel for ore reduction. Local wood supplies from stands of pinion-juniper and other trees provided the timber to make the coal. In Candelaria and Tuscarora furnaces were fired with sagebrush, and in White Hills, Arizona the spongy Joshua trees were a source of raw material to make charcoal. |
Historic charcoal images
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While discussing scores of Nevada mining districts, Myron Angel’s History of Nevada 1881 repeatedly recorded whether or not wood and water were locally available in various mining districts, devoting attention to these resources almost as much as that of the mineral deposits themselves. He offered extensive histories of Nevada’s two largest lead-silver districts, Eureka and Tybo.
Discovered in 1864, Eureka saw limited growth because the unsuccessful Washoe pan amalgamating processing delayed large-scale operations. But when C. A. Stetefeldt designed an effective smelting furnace in 1869, development quickly followed. But the new smelting process required higher smelting temperatures to reduce the lead-silver ore, so mill owners turned to the use of charcoal. During the 1870s charcoal production and usage at smelters was a major component of the Eureka economy.
What is Charcoal?
Charcoal is made by the carbonizing of wood. The regulation of the flow of air to the burning wood in a pit or a kiln results in controlled combustion, incomplete burning. After the wood is carbonzed, or pyrolyzed, charcoal is the end product which was fed into smelters in Eureka, Tybo, Cerro Gordo, and in many other western places. Fed into the smelter furnaces in admixture with the ore and certain fluxing materials, and re-ignited under forced draught, the charcoal-carbon burned with minimal smoke and produced the desired intense white heat and a long hot flames—much hotter and faster than could be realized from ordinary cordwood which harbored organic matter.
In either a pit or a kiln some wood burned up in the process of raising the temperature of the entire wood charge until pyrolsis begins and maintains itself until the end of the burning process. Since the intense heat in a pit or kiln can reach several hundred degrees, the charge must be cooled without oxygen before it could be unloaded and the charcoal sacked for shipment.
Pits and Kilns
Following the practice established generations before in the Old World, charcoal was initially burned in pits of various sizes, but this may be a misnomer. They were also known as heaps or meilers, as well as clamps. These ancient, simple methods involved laying wood on level or slightly sloping ground. The logs were piled in horizontal rows of about nine feet, the they were covered with chips, twigs, and leaves, and finally with either sand or dirt to prevent a fire. In al, the circular mounds were 40 to 50 feet in diameter. There were variations in design known as the clamp heap, the standing meilers, and line meiler with a center block. Air was not allowed to circulate within the pit or otherwise the entire mass of wood would burn.
A large pit might hold as much as 100 cords of green wood— generally pinion pine, juniper, mountain mahogany or quaking aspen. Ignited and allowed to burn to a certain degree before being smothered with earth, the cargo of such a pit would smolder flameless for 15 to 20 days before finally burning itself out, One firing in such a pit produced from 2500 to 3000 bushels of charcoal‑the black porous residue of wood from which all matter has been burned, leaving nearly pure carbon.
Where previously all charcoal was burned in earthen pits, the trend by the early 1870s was to build beehive shaped kilns, with heights attaining 20 to 30 feet, and stoutly constructed of stone or brick or a combination of them. Wall thickness at the base might be two feet or more, descending to 12 to 15 inches at the top of the kiln. The interior floor diameter ranged from 20 to 30 feet.
Off-setting the original cost of $500 to $1,000 each was the fact that such kilns could be used almost indefinitely, producing charcoal of a much higher quality and with less dross than was possible in pit-burning. Kilns also allowed for better control of drafts. The resultant saving in fuel material soon repaid initial construction costs. As the effectiveness of the beehive kiln became apparent, they began to be built in sets of two, three, or more, or even a cluster of 10 as in Wild Rose Canyon in Death Valley. Everywhere kilns were built they became at once a point of local interest.
Rossiter Raymond’s mining report published in 1873 states, “The kilns have the shape of an old fashioned beehive with a diameter of 23 feet at the base and a height of 20 feet. There is a charge door near the top in the backside, and a discharging door in front, level with the ground. A kiln holds 25 cords of wood, and the time for burning is 12 days; 38 to 48 bushels of wood, solid charcoal are produced per cord of wood, or from 950 to 1200 bushels per day. The yield is far higher than can be obtained in a common charcoal pit.”
Kiln construction follow the same beehive form with a gracefully arched stone roof, these kilns derive their sole support from the highly skillful manner in which the stones are fitted together. The stones were square-faced to the exterior, with dressed stone forming the frames of the charge and the discharge door.
Near the top and at the rear of each kiln is a charge door (or window) for stoking, and at ground level was a discharge door for removing the charcoal. Both openings were carefully fitted with heavy iron doors which closed against an iron frame set into the stone doorway, thereby effecting a seal nearly airtight. All air necessary to control the burning process was supplied through a series of small ports built into the kiln wall each located about a foot and a half above the ground. When the wood was burned through, these vent holes were sealed or fitted with a long square metal tray.
Burn management required careful attention. Control was exercised by regulating air flowing into the oven through the small ports or vents. In either a pit or kiln, carbonization descended from the top of the charge to the bottom and horizontally at the same time. The charcoal burner gauged the pace of combustion by carefully noting the color of smoke from the pit of kiln emanating from the top, whether or not there is uneven burning, or if there had to be adjustments in airflow and also determine when to close down the burning.
A ready supply of clay was maintained to repair cracks in the oven wall as they developed. Filling the cracks was known as “jumping the pit.” Otherwise, if a substantial crack was left unattended, the increased airflow could easily turn a smoldering oven into a flaming inferno, thus an oven had to be watched night and day during the entire extent of the burn. Once the charcoal reached the desired stage, all oven openings were closed off and the fire smothered; cooling took seven to ten days. If unsealed too soon, the charcoal might reignite and burn up.
Various aspects of charcoal production were season specific. Much of the Pinion was cut during the winter when the sap was down. Sleds with two wooden runners and drawn by a horse were used to haul wood to the kilns. Production took place from the spring through the fall months, coinciding with the peak period of mining and milling activity.
Tools employed by burners at earthen ovens consisted of baskets for moving charcoal from the oven to wagons or bagging areas. Charcoal rakes had long wooden handles and long iron teeth. Shovels had long handles and rounded blades. Ladders were used to reach the top of the oven to light it at the start, and to fill cracks during the burn.
Three distinct entities were involved in the charcoal production industry: the producer or burners, the consumer (the smelters) and the middleman, the teamster. The latter worked for the smelters on a contract basis. Insofar as the relationship between the teamsters and the burners, it depended on the locality. More commonly the latter were subcontractors to the teamsters or the burners worked as employees of the teamsters, who owned the charcoal even while still piled up in the kilns.
(I) The Burners (Colliers or Carbonari)
The burners, or colliers or carbonari as they were called because many of the men had ancestral roots in southern Italy, performed labor that did not demand extraordinary skill nor intelligence, and those employed received less than half the wage paid to miners. They lived in remote charcoal production sites at near subsistence level in tents, wikieups, crude hovels or dugouts under poor sanitary conditions. They often hunted and foraged for their food.
Clearly, charcoal burners stood at a low economic status of the Western mining society and were easily taken advantage of. There is evidence of collusion of teamsters and even merchants against the carbonari. Teamsters frequently would not reveal to them smelter receipts which would indicate the quantity of bushels delivered and how much they collected from smelter management. This situation allowed the teamster to maximize his profit by underpaying the carbonari, who were also often not paid in cash but in credits redeemable at selected stores at the mining camp, where merchants might also charge higher prices for goods than ordinary customers.
Carbonari spent their weekly $10 wage on liquor and gambling in the mining camps, and all the while were scorned not only by saloon keepers but also ignored by the muckers and mill-men whose very livelihood ironically depended upon the carbonari’s labors.
(2) The Teamsters
With long-line teams and up to four wagons, teamsters showed up at the production sites kilns or pits, loaded the charcoal in gunny sacks, and delivered them to the smelter. The long-line teams consisted of horses at the wagon tongue and up to 14 or 16 mules in front of them and drawing as many as four wagons, each loaded with about four tons of stacked, bagged charcoal. Each ton represented about 140 bushels of charcoal. Once the teamster was paid at the smelter, he then returned to the charcoal camps to settle with the colliers. The woodcutters and tenders of pits and kilns were paid an average of about 13 cents per bushel, though the teamster had collected from smelter operations just about double that amount.
Discovered in 1864, Eureka saw limited growth because the unsuccessful Washoe pan amalgamating processing delayed large-scale operations. But when C. A. Stetefeldt designed an effective smelting furnace in 1869, development quickly followed. But the new smelting process required higher smelting temperatures to reduce the lead-silver ore, so mill owners turned to the use of charcoal. During the 1870s charcoal production and usage at smelters was a major component of the Eureka economy.
What is Charcoal?
Charcoal is made by the carbonizing of wood. The regulation of the flow of air to the burning wood in a pit or a kiln results in controlled combustion, incomplete burning. After the wood is carbonzed, or pyrolyzed, charcoal is the end product which was fed into smelters in Eureka, Tybo, Cerro Gordo, and in many other western places. Fed into the smelter furnaces in admixture with the ore and certain fluxing materials, and re-ignited under forced draught, the charcoal-carbon burned with minimal smoke and produced the desired intense white heat and a long hot flames—much hotter and faster than could be realized from ordinary cordwood which harbored organic matter.
In either a pit or a kiln some wood burned up in the process of raising the temperature of the entire wood charge until pyrolsis begins and maintains itself until the end of the burning process. Since the intense heat in a pit or kiln can reach several hundred degrees, the charge must be cooled without oxygen before it could be unloaded and the charcoal sacked for shipment.
Pits and Kilns
Following the practice established generations before in the Old World, charcoal was initially burned in pits of various sizes, but this may be a misnomer. They were also known as heaps or meilers, as well as clamps. These ancient, simple methods involved laying wood on level or slightly sloping ground. The logs were piled in horizontal rows of about nine feet, the they were covered with chips, twigs, and leaves, and finally with either sand or dirt to prevent a fire. In al, the circular mounds were 40 to 50 feet in diameter. There were variations in design known as the clamp heap, the standing meilers, and line meiler with a center block. Air was not allowed to circulate within the pit or otherwise the entire mass of wood would burn.
A large pit might hold as much as 100 cords of green wood— generally pinion pine, juniper, mountain mahogany or quaking aspen. Ignited and allowed to burn to a certain degree before being smothered with earth, the cargo of such a pit would smolder flameless for 15 to 20 days before finally burning itself out, One firing in such a pit produced from 2500 to 3000 bushels of charcoal‑the black porous residue of wood from which all matter has been burned, leaving nearly pure carbon.
Where previously all charcoal was burned in earthen pits, the trend by the early 1870s was to build beehive shaped kilns, with heights attaining 20 to 30 feet, and stoutly constructed of stone or brick or a combination of them. Wall thickness at the base might be two feet or more, descending to 12 to 15 inches at the top of the kiln. The interior floor diameter ranged from 20 to 30 feet.
Off-setting the original cost of $500 to $1,000 each was the fact that such kilns could be used almost indefinitely, producing charcoal of a much higher quality and with less dross than was possible in pit-burning. Kilns also allowed for better control of drafts. The resultant saving in fuel material soon repaid initial construction costs. As the effectiveness of the beehive kiln became apparent, they began to be built in sets of two, three, or more, or even a cluster of 10 as in Wild Rose Canyon in Death Valley. Everywhere kilns were built they became at once a point of local interest.
Rossiter Raymond’s mining report published in 1873 states, “The kilns have the shape of an old fashioned beehive with a diameter of 23 feet at the base and a height of 20 feet. There is a charge door near the top in the backside, and a discharging door in front, level with the ground. A kiln holds 25 cords of wood, and the time for burning is 12 days; 38 to 48 bushels of wood, solid charcoal are produced per cord of wood, or from 950 to 1200 bushels per day. The yield is far higher than can be obtained in a common charcoal pit.”
Kiln construction follow the same beehive form with a gracefully arched stone roof, these kilns derive their sole support from the highly skillful manner in which the stones are fitted together. The stones were square-faced to the exterior, with dressed stone forming the frames of the charge and the discharge door.
Near the top and at the rear of each kiln is a charge door (or window) for stoking, and at ground level was a discharge door for removing the charcoal. Both openings were carefully fitted with heavy iron doors which closed against an iron frame set into the stone doorway, thereby effecting a seal nearly airtight. All air necessary to control the burning process was supplied through a series of small ports built into the kiln wall each located about a foot and a half above the ground. When the wood was burned through, these vent holes were sealed or fitted with a long square metal tray.
Burn management required careful attention. Control was exercised by regulating air flowing into the oven through the small ports or vents. In either a pit or kiln, carbonization descended from the top of the charge to the bottom and horizontally at the same time. The charcoal burner gauged the pace of combustion by carefully noting the color of smoke from the pit of kiln emanating from the top, whether or not there is uneven burning, or if there had to be adjustments in airflow and also determine when to close down the burning.
A ready supply of clay was maintained to repair cracks in the oven wall as they developed. Filling the cracks was known as “jumping the pit.” Otherwise, if a substantial crack was left unattended, the increased airflow could easily turn a smoldering oven into a flaming inferno, thus an oven had to be watched night and day during the entire extent of the burn. Once the charcoal reached the desired stage, all oven openings were closed off and the fire smothered; cooling took seven to ten days. If unsealed too soon, the charcoal might reignite and burn up.
Various aspects of charcoal production were season specific. Much of the Pinion was cut during the winter when the sap was down. Sleds with two wooden runners and drawn by a horse were used to haul wood to the kilns. Production took place from the spring through the fall months, coinciding with the peak period of mining and milling activity.
Tools employed by burners at earthen ovens consisted of baskets for moving charcoal from the oven to wagons or bagging areas. Charcoal rakes had long wooden handles and long iron teeth. Shovels had long handles and rounded blades. Ladders were used to reach the top of the oven to light it at the start, and to fill cracks during the burn.
Three distinct entities were involved in the charcoal production industry: the producer or burners, the consumer (the smelters) and the middleman, the teamster. The latter worked for the smelters on a contract basis. Insofar as the relationship between the teamsters and the burners, it depended on the locality. More commonly the latter were subcontractors to the teamsters or the burners worked as employees of the teamsters, who owned the charcoal even while still piled up in the kilns.
(I) The Burners (Colliers or Carbonari)
The burners, or colliers or carbonari as they were called because many of the men had ancestral roots in southern Italy, performed labor that did not demand extraordinary skill nor intelligence, and those employed received less than half the wage paid to miners. They lived in remote charcoal production sites at near subsistence level in tents, wikieups, crude hovels or dugouts under poor sanitary conditions. They often hunted and foraged for their food.
Clearly, charcoal burners stood at a low economic status of the Western mining society and were easily taken advantage of. There is evidence of collusion of teamsters and even merchants against the carbonari. Teamsters frequently would not reveal to them smelter receipts which would indicate the quantity of bushels delivered and how much they collected from smelter management. This situation allowed the teamster to maximize his profit by underpaying the carbonari, who were also often not paid in cash but in credits redeemable at selected stores at the mining camp, where merchants might also charge higher prices for goods than ordinary customers.
Carbonari spent their weekly $10 wage on liquor and gambling in the mining camps, and all the while were scorned not only by saloon keepers but also ignored by the muckers and mill-men whose very livelihood ironically depended upon the carbonari’s labors.
(2) The Teamsters
With long-line teams and up to four wagons, teamsters showed up at the production sites kilns or pits, loaded the charcoal in gunny sacks, and delivered them to the smelter. The long-line teams consisted of horses at the wagon tongue and up to 14 or 16 mules in front of them and drawing as many as four wagons, each loaded with about four tons of stacked, bagged charcoal. Each ton represented about 140 bushels of charcoal. Once the teamster was paid at the smelter, he then returned to the charcoal camps to settle with the colliers. The woodcutters and tenders of pits and kilns were paid an average of about 13 cents per bushel, though the teamster had collected from smelter operations just about double that amount.
Trouble at Eureka, Nevada in 1879
Author Stanley Paher (center) with Scott Raine (right) and Storm Raine (left) in 2020. 2020 is the 50th anniversary of Paher's landmark book Nevada Ghost Towns & Mining Camps first published in 1970.
Supplying fuel to Eureka smelters was big business between 1870 and 1880, but by the summer of 1879 trouble developed among the carbonari, the teamsters and the smelter owners. The situation came to a head when the carbonari formed the Eureka Coalburners Protective Association at Celso Tolli's local Italian saloon where the burners prepared a list of demands, especially an increase in the price paid for charcoal from 25 cents to 30 cents per bushel. On July 7 charcoal burners assembled at the Eureka Opera House, the only place in the camp large enough to accommodate all of them. Beginning July 8, a “take notice” advertisement was published in the local Eureka Sentinel for ten days asserting the new demand, an emphatic statement. Further, the carbonari demanded that they be paid in cash and, further, asked for full disclosure from the teamster’s receipts showing how many bushels have been sold. The Association which had grown to 1,196 members threatened to cut off supplies of charcoal unless their demands were met.
On the morning of August 9, six coal burners entered the home of teamster, George Lamoreux, dragged him from his bed, and threatened to beat him if he continued to haul charcoal. Later that day he drove to a charcoal ranch to pick up a load. But when confronted by the carbonari, he returned to Eureka with empty wagons. About that same time, Robert Brown was prevented from loading charcoal and he, like Lamoreux, took the matter up with the local sheriff.
On August 11 a local Eureka news report stated that “two thousand persons, banded together, and with arms in their possession, defied civil authorities and refused to have any of their number arrested. They now hold forcible possession of many coal pits in this county. By force they prevented owners of charcoal from hauling it to their furnaces, and they threaten to destroy other property and burn the mining camp. Marshall Rich, who had brought along several wagons, told the owners [the teamsters] of the charcoal to go ahead and begin loading, but the Italians prevented them from doing so. Arrests have been resisted by the rioters, who are well armed, and organized under the command of desperate leaders.”
The local press reported allegations of misconduct on both sides. When Eureka’s smelter operators united to slash the price they would pay for a bushel of charcoal to 27 cents instead of the current 30 cents on the grounds that declining quality of ore no longer would allow them to pay the higher price, trouble began. The burners’ Association rejected the reduction by refusing to permit further charcoal deliveries to the smelters and, on August 18, forcibly took possession of the Eureka.
In response, Nevada Governor Kinkead quickly called into active service the state militia and ordered them to the stricken camp. The Fish Creek War was on and the ensuing strife was principally over the price of charcoal. When the well-armed militia arrived, a lull in the fighting ensued until August 18 when a 9-man posse headed by Deputy Sheriff Simpson, attacked a charcoal camp on Fish Creek, 30 miles south of Eureka, and in a one-sided battle killed five of the coal burners, wounded six others and took several prisoners. None of the lawmen suffered damage except to reputations, the posse being criticized for the tactics employed.
The shock of this event and the tone of substantial legal proceedings overwhelmed the Carbonari. Though some resistance continued for a few weeks here and there, most resumed making charcoal. In the end, charcoal prices dropped to 22 cents a bushel. The local press estimated the cost of the war to the county was between $10,000 to $30,000.
On the morning of August 9, six coal burners entered the home of teamster, George Lamoreux, dragged him from his bed, and threatened to beat him if he continued to haul charcoal. Later that day he drove to a charcoal ranch to pick up a load. But when confronted by the carbonari, he returned to Eureka with empty wagons. About that same time, Robert Brown was prevented from loading charcoal and he, like Lamoreux, took the matter up with the local sheriff.
On August 11 a local Eureka news report stated that “two thousand persons, banded together, and with arms in their possession, defied civil authorities and refused to have any of their number arrested. They now hold forcible possession of many coal pits in this county. By force they prevented owners of charcoal from hauling it to their furnaces, and they threaten to destroy other property and burn the mining camp. Marshall Rich, who had brought along several wagons, told the owners [the teamsters] of the charcoal to go ahead and begin loading, but the Italians prevented them from doing so. Arrests have been resisted by the rioters, who are well armed, and organized under the command of desperate leaders.”
The local press reported allegations of misconduct on both sides. When Eureka’s smelter operators united to slash the price they would pay for a bushel of charcoal to 27 cents instead of the current 30 cents on the grounds that declining quality of ore no longer would allow them to pay the higher price, trouble began. The burners’ Association rejected the reduction by refusing to permit further charcoal deliveries to the smelters and, on August 18, forcibly took possession of the Eureka.
In response, Nevada Governor Kinkead quickly called into active service the state militia and ordered them to the stricken camp. The Fish Creek War was on and the ensuing strife was principally over the price of charcoal. When the well-armed militia arrived, a lull in the fighting ensued until August 18 when a 9-man posse headed by Deputy Sheriff Simpson, attacked a charcoal camp on Fish Creek, 30 miles south of Eureka, and in a one-sided battle killed five of the coal burners, wounded six others and took several prisoners. None of the lawmen suffered damage except to reputations, the posse being criticized for the tactics employed.
The shock of this event and the tone of substantial legal proceedings overwhelmed the Carbonari. Though some resistance continued for a few weeks here and there, most resumed making charcoal. In the end, charcoal prices dropped to 22 cents a bushel. The local press estimated the cost of the war to the county was between $10,000 to $30,000.
The Charcoal Industry, 1870-1878
The practice of dealing in charcoal by the bushel unit prevailed throughout the mining West. A bushel of charcoal had a bulk of 1.59 cubic feet, and weighed from 16 to 20 pound, depending on the species of wood used and quality of the finished product. One cord of green wood four feet high, four feet wide and eight feet long—yielded by pit-burning about 25 bushels of charcoal.
The price of coal was contingent upon several factors, especially the hauling distance between kiln and smelter, and that most basic of all criteria supply and demand. Smelter owners at Oreana, Nevada, in 1867 had to shell out 65 cents a bushel for charcoal, though after the next year when the Central Pacific began running nearby, profiteering charcoal contractors had to slash their demand to 25 cents a bushel. Even then charcoal represented the smelter's largest single item of expense.
Lead-silver smelters at Eureka for example, ordinarily required about 30 bushels of charcoal to reduce a ton of ore. The Eureka Consolidated works consumed charcoal at the average daily rate of 4,600 bushels daily. Richmond Consolidated, also of Eureka, was using 4600 bushels daily, and during the 22- month period from March 1873 to January 1875, expended for charcoal the staggering sum of $880,000. At their peak of production the dozen furnaces at Eureka were purchasing $600,000 worth of charcoal monthly.
Evidence of the rapidity with which Nevada’s foothills were denuded was recorded by Rossiter Raymond in 1872: “The wood 10 miles around Eureka has been used up in a little over a year—thus the question of fuel becomes, at once, a very important one.”
A Nevada legislature report issued in 1875 stated: “The timber in the vicinity of Eureka is fast disappearing. The coal burners have stripped the hills and mountains within a radius of 25 miles . . . Charcoal must be obtained from some other source very soon or the furnaces must be stopped . . . Should the charcoal rates advance within the next month or two, a crisis is imminent.” The situation in some places became so drastic woodcutters were seizing almost any vegetation available. The growing fuel shortage materials was responsible in large measure, for a transition that began creeping into the charcoal industry about 1880 to common coal.
Tybo, Nevada
On September 2, 1877 the Eureka Sentinel reported that “Henry Allen, the well-known contractor of Eureka, has just finished a work of considerable magnitude at Hot Creek. Last summer he was employed by Tybo Consolidated Co. to build 15 kilns in which the company proposed to burn the charcoal necessary to supply their furnaces at Tybo. He finished the work about a week ago, and some idea of its magnitude may be gathered from the fact that 600,000 bricks were used in building the kilns.
“They are oval in shape, having a diameter of 25 feet. Each one has a capacity of 1400 bushels, turning out that quantity of coal to each charge, the operation consuming five days. A great economy of time results from these kilns, instead of burning in the old-fashioned way and as the company owns a vast quantity of wood in the immediate vicinity, they calculate on their fuel costing them about half of the usual rates. A force of twenty men was employed about three months in building the kilns.”
If the kilns were superior to the pit-method of burning, it was a fortuitous circumstance, for the situation in many parts of the mining West became drastic. A squeeze play had developed, with the mills and smelters and the middle. As surface ores were depleted and the mines deepened, production became more costly; and as exhaustion of timber resources forced upon the charcoal contractors an ever-lengthening haul, the price demanded for charcoal crept slowly upward.
Another charcoal war, marked by less bloodshed than the one experienced at Eureka, followed the importation of Chinese coolie woodcutters to a charcoal camp near Tybo. Because they would work more cheaply, Chinese laborers in most Great Basin mining camps were most unwelcome. And so, when charcoal burners under contract to supply several million bushels of fuel to Tybo’s Two-G Mining Co. imported a gang of “coolies” as laborers, white workmen united in protest.
As recreated by Nell Murbarger, “Assembling on the side of streets and in saloons, small knots of muttering whites congregated in a roaring mob and stormed the sleeping charcoal camp. To the tune of cracking bull whips, pistol shots and drunken curses, they sent the Orientals fleeing for their lives. Morning found the charcoal contractors scouting the nearby hills for their scattered woodcutters. Driven back to the kilns, virtually at gunpoint, the still-jittery Orientals were ordered to resume work, and throughout that day discharged their duties under the combined threat and protection of loaded Winchesters.
“Nightfall brought another conclave of miners bristling with guns and indignation. In deference to the armed guards still vigilantly patrolling the charcoal camp and its environs the original plan to ‘clean out the Chinks’ lost some of its fire, and the contractors were given 24 hours in which to get rid of the Chinamen.”
When the end of this grace period found them still cutting wood under protection of the rifle-armed guards, another ultimatum was issued. Either the Chinese leave camp before another nightfall or both they and their employers would be ridden out of town.
White laborers by this time were so thoroughly aroused that wholesale bloodshed would have been inevitable had not the Chinese offered to leave peaceably in exchange for stage fare for the 90-mile ride to Eureka, and Tybo's Anti-Asiatic League shelled out passage money.
Meanwhile the charcoal industry was eating itself out of the land. Smelters at Eureka were consuming 1.2 million bushels of charcoal annually, and the tree crop from over 5000 acres of juniper-pinyon wood land and the hills were denuded of wood in a 35-mile radius. Like a pestilence, leaving behind it tens of thousands of acres stripped of timber, the charcoal industry also left in its wake a black record of bloodshed, racial strife and corruption. Area Shoshone also were rendered hostile and threatened by starvation through ruthless destruction of the nut-pine groves which for untold centuries had provided their mainstay of life.
Cerro Gordo
A party of Mexicans made initial silver discoveries high on the southwestern edge of the Inyo Range in 1865, though some say as early as 1861. By decade’s end Mexicans had opened up several mines, and or was treated in locally built galemadores (vasos), crudely built reverberatory furnaces fashioned like a steeply built hearth common to northern Mexico, and horno do fundicion, a type of shaft furnace which built in pairs to provide strength, side by side, against an adobe wall under a 40-foot vaulted roof. It was regarded as a “poor man’s smelter.” It could treat up to five tons of ore daily, but returns were generally unsatisfactory. After 1870 two steam-powered furnaces housed in stone and steel began pouring out alternate amounts of fiery metal and red-hot slag. Charcoal was obtained from wood hillsides north and south of the camp, as well as from the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada.
Wildrose Canyon
In the spring of 1877 ten conical kilns were built at the head of Wildrose Canyon in the Panamint Range to fuel the two smelters of the Modoc Consolidated Mining Co. on the east flank of the Argus Range, about 25 miles west. Twenty-five feet high and 30 feet in diameter, these kilns held about 42 cords of wood each. Under supervision of saloon keeper James Honan, they produced charcoal during spring and summer of 1877. Depletion of the luxuriant growth of nut pine, cedar and juniper soon put an end to Wildrose Canyon charcoal business (Mining and Scientific Press, September 22, 1877).
Conclusion
After the early 1880s, whether the smelter operators liked it or not, the end was near for the charcoal industry. The ready answer was coke, and with retooling, experimentation and increased skill in both coking and smelting, the transition from charcoal to coke was gradually but grudgingly made.
As each smelter made the conversion, erstwhile woodchoppers and charcoal burners drifted to other jobs, especially to the coal fields. In the words of Murbarger, “With the last charge of wood laid in the great stone kilns, and the last fire grown cold, the desert wind and brush moved in to erase the black scars of the charcoal camps, and Nature reclothed the land laid waste.”
A visit to charcoal kilns today shows that around them are scattered fragments of imperishable jet-black charcoal fragments and waste. The visitor will marvel how without mortar or supporting steel reinforcing, the picturesque kilns have been standing solidly for a century and a half with no maintenance or repairs. They have served as storm shelters by animals and even temporary quarters for blizzard-threatened desert wayfarers.
But the real worth of the long-abandoned ovens is their historical function to remind present-day mining history buffs of a long-vanished industry of charcoal making, a product without which the West’s silver-lead mines could not have been exploited.
The practice of dealing in charcoal by the bushel unit prevailed throughout the mining West. A bushel of charcoal had a bulk of 1.59 cubic feet, and weighed from 16 to 20 pound, depending on the species of wood used and quality of the finished product. One cord of green wood four feet high, four feet wide and eight feet long—yielded by pit-burning about 25 bushels of charcoal.
The price of coal was contingent upon several factors, especially the hauling distance between kiln and smelter, and that most basic of all criteria supply and demand. Smelter owners at Oreana, Nevada, in 1867 had to shell out 65 cents a bushel for charcoal, though after the next year when the Central Pacific began running nearby, profiteering charcoal contractors had to slash their demand to 25 cents a bushel. Even then charcoal represented the smelter's largest single item of expense.
Lead-silver smelters at Eureka for example, ordinarily required about 30 bushels of charcoal to reduce a ton of ore. The Eureka Consolidated works consumed charcoal at the average daily rate of 4,600 bushels daily. Richmond Consolidated, also of Eureka, was using 4600 bushels daily, and during the 22- month period from March 1873 to January 1875, expended for charcoal the staggering sum of $880,000. At their peak of production the dozen furnaces at Eureka were purchasing $600,000 worth of charcoal monthly.
Evidence of the rapidity with which Nevada’s foothills were denuded was recorded by Rossiter Raymond in 1872: “The wood 10 miles around Eureka has been used up in a little over a year—thus the question of fuel becomes, at once, a very important one.”
A Nevada legislature report issued in 1875 stated: “The timber in the vicinity of Eureka is fast disappearing. The coal burners have stripped the hills and mountains within a radius of 25 miles . . . Charcoal must be obtained from some other source very soon or the furnaces must be stopped . . . Should the charcoal rates advance within the next month or two, a crisis is imminent.” The situation in some places became so drastic woodcutters were seizing almost any vegetation available. The growing fuel shortage materials was responsible in large measure, for a transition that began creeping into the charcoal industry about 1880 to common coal.
Tybo, Nevada
On September 2, 1877 the Eureka Sentinel reported that “Henry Allen, the well-known contractor of Eureka, has just finished a work of considerable magnitude at Hot Creek. Last summer he was employed by Tybo Consolidated Co. to build 15 kilns in which the company proposed to burn the charcoal necessary to supply their furnaces at Tybo. He finished the work about a week ago, and some idea of its magnitude may be gathered from the fact that 600,000 bricks were used in building the kilns.
“They are oval in shape, having a diameter of 25 feet. Each one has a capacity of 1400 bushels, turning out that quantity of coal to each charge, the operation consuming five days. A great economy of time results from these kilns, instead of burning in the old-fashioned way and as the company owns a vast quantity of wood in the immediate vicinity, they calculate on their fuel costing them about half of the usual rates. A force of twenty men was employed about three months in building the kilns.”
If the kilns were superior to the pit-method of burning, it was a fortuitous circumstance, for the situation in many parts of the mining West became drastic. A squeeze play had developed, with the mills and smelters and the middle. As surface ores were depleted and the mines deepened, production became more costly; and as exhaustion of timber resources forced upon the charcoal contractors an ever-lengthening haul, the price demanded for charcoal crept slowly upward.
Another charcoal war, marked by less bloodshed than the one experienced at Eureka, followed the importation of Chinese coolie woodcutters to a charcoal camp near Tybo. Because they would work more cheaply, Chinese laborers in most Great Basin mining camps were most unwelcome. And so, when charcoal burners under contract to supply several million bushels of fuel to Tybo’s Two-G Mining Co. imported a gang of “coolies” as laborers, white workmen united in protest.
As recreated by Nell Murbarger, “Assembling on the side of streets and in saloons, small knots of muttering whites congregated in a roaring mob and stormed the sleeping charcoal camp. To the tune of cracking bull whips, pistol shots and drunken curses, they sent the Orientals fleeing for their lives. Morning found the charcoal contractors scouting the nearby hills for their scattered woodcutters. Driven back to the kilns, virtually at gunpoint, the still-jittery Orientals were ordered to resume work, and throughout that day discharged their duties under the combined threat and protection of loaded Winchesters.
“Nightfall brought another conclave of miners bristling with guns and indignation. In deference to the armed guards still vigilantly patrolling the charcoal camp and its environs the original plan to ‘clean out the Chinks’ lost some of its fire, and the contractors were given 24 hours in which to get rid of the Chinamen.”
When the end of this grace period found them still cutting wood under protection of the rifle-armed guards, another ultimatum was issued. Either the Chinese leave camp before another nightfall or both they and their employers would be ridden out of town.
White laborers by this time were so thoroughly aroused that wholesale bloodshed would have been inevitable had not the Chinese offered to leave peaceably in exchange for stage fare for the 90-mile ride to Eureka, and Tybo's Anti-Asiatic League shelled out passage money.
Meanwhile the charcoal industry was eating itself out of the land. Smelters at Eureka were consuming 1.2 million bushels of charcoal annually, and the tree crop from over 5000 acres of juniper-pinyon wood land and the hills were denuded of wood in a 35-mile radius. Like a pestilence, leaving behind it tens of thousands of acres stripped of timber, the charcoal industry also left in its wake a black record of bloodshed, racial strife and corruption. Area Shoshone also were rendered hostile and threatened by starvation through ruthless destruction of the nut-pine groves which for untold centuries had provided their mainstay of life.
Cerro Gordo
A party of Mexicans made initial silver discoveries high on the southwestern edge of the Inyo Range in 1865, though some say as early as 1861. By decade’s end Mexicans had opened up several mines, and or was treated in locally built galemadores (vasos), crudely built reverberatory furnaces fashioned like a steeply built hearth common to northern Mexico, and horno do fundicion, a type of shaft furnace which built in pairs to provide strength, side by side, against an adobe wall under a 40-foot vaulted roof. It was regarded as a “poor man’s smelter.” It could treat up to five tons of ore daily, but returns were generally unsatisfactory. After 1870 two steam-powered furnaces housed in stone and steel began pouring out alternate amounts of fiery metal and red-hot slag. Charcoal was obtained from wood hillsides north and south of the camp, as well as from the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada.
Wildrose Canyon
In the spring of 1877 ten conical kilns were built at the head of Wildrose Canyon in the Panamint Range to fuel the two smelters of the Modoc Consolidated Mining Co. on the east flank of the Argus Range, about 25 miles west. Twenty-five feet high and 30 feet in diameter, these kilns held about 42 cords of wood each. Under supervision of saloon keeper James Honan, they produced charcoal during spring and summer of 1877. Depletion of the luxuriant growth of nut pine, cedar and juniper soon put an end to Wildrose Canyon charcoal business (Mining and Scientific Press, September 22, 1877).
Conclusion
After the early 1880s, whether the smelter operators liked it or not, the end was near for the charcoal industry. The ready answer was coke, and with retooling, experimentation and increased skill in both coking and smelting, the transition from charcoal to coke was gradually but grudgingly made.
As each smelter made the conversion, erstwhile woodchoppers and charcoal burners drifted to other jobs, especially to the coal fields. In the words of Murbarger, “With the last charge of wood laid in the great stone kilns, and the last fire grown cold, the desert wind and brush moved in to erase the black scars of the charcoal camps, and Nature reclothed the land laid waste.”
A visit to charcoal kilns today shows that around them are scattered fragments of imperishable jet-black charcoal fragments and waste. The visitor will marvel how without mortar or supporting steel reinforcing, the picturesque kilns have been standing solidly for a century and a half with no maintenance or repairs. They have served as storm shelters by animals and even temporary quarters for blizzard-threatened desert wayfarers.
But the real worth of the long-abandoned ovens is their historical function to remind present-day mining history buffs of a long-vanished industry of charcoal making, a product without which the West’s silver-lead mines could not have been exploited.
The Fish Creek War
Below is another version of this historic conflict:
Charcoal was essential for the smelting process, and by 1879 about 175,000 pounds per day were required by the smelters. The following is taken from
Eureka Nevada: A History of the town, Its Boom Years 1879-85 by Judith K Winzeler and Nancy Peppin, 1982.
Memorial for the charcoal burners - located at the Eureka County Cemetary
Italians made up over 15 percent of Eureka's population: over a thousand were charcoal burners from the poverty-stricken Alpine area of Italy. The dregs of the labor force in Eureka, they were exploited by the system of contracting fuel for the smelters. Many were cheated because they spoke no English. During a slow time in the summer of 1879, the desperate burners stopped the supply of charcoal, asking for a two-cent increase of pay to 30 cents a bushel. At first the town was sympathetic, but fears grew that the smelting furnaces, the lifeblood of the community, would be shut down. As attitudes hardened on both sides, many who had been sympathetic stopped supporting the charcoal burners.
The Charcoal Burners' Protective Association formed in Celso Tolli's saloon. They announced that no charcoal would be loaded for less than 30 cents a bushel. Several teamsters were threatened and their wagons unloaded. The refineries threatened to close down. Burners were arrested, but little charcoal was loaded. Lawsuits were filed. The militia was sent for, in case of violence, and everything seemed under control. But, on August 18, 1879, Fish Creek, an area twenty miles south of Eureka, was the site of an ugly confrontation between striking charcoal burners and a local posse. After an exchange of words, shots were fired. Five burners died and several more were wounded. The Italian embassy in San Francisco protested, but a coroner's inquest excused the posse as acting "in the line of duty." The charcoal burners realized that the companies had won and that they had no choice but to go back to work. Then the companies lowered the price of charcoal even further.
The Charcoal Burners' Protective Association formed in Celso Tolli's saloon. They announced that no charcoal would be loaded for less than 30 cents a bushel. Several teamsters were threatened and their wagons unloaded. The refineries threatened to close down. Burners were arrested, but little charcoal was loaded. Lawsuits were filed. The militia was sent for, in case of violence, and everything seemed under control. But, on August 18, 1879, Fish Creek, an area twenty miles south of Eureka, was the site of an ugly confrontation between striking charcoal burners and a local posse. After an exchange of words, shots were fired. Five burners died and several more were wounded. The Italian embassy in San Francisco protested, but a coroner's inquest excused the posse as acting "in the line of duty." The charcoal burners realized that the companies had won and that they had no choice but to go back to work. Then the companies lowered the price of charcoal even further.
Charcoal Kilns
