What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word “mine”? Is it District 12 from the book series The Hunger Games? Do you think about a cheesy phrase that some people say on Valentine’s Day? Or, by chance, do you think of the wonderful city in Southwest Wisconsin that is Platteville?
Something that makes Platteville unique to the rest of Wisconsin is its immense history with the mining industry. This city stands out with its 200+ foot high “M” on Platte Mound, and it shows miner pride through the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s mascot, Pioneer Pete. However, perhaps one of the greatest features of this city that showcases its mining history is The Mining & Rollo Jamison Museum, a year-round tourist attraction that I had the privilege of visiting.
Told to wait a while until the tour would start, I decided to meander through the small portion of the museum dedicated to the mine. The other section, situated in the upstairs portion of the building, is the Rollo Jamison section of the museum. But I’ll discuss that topic later on in this blog post.
A visitor can see informational posters littered around the mining portion of the museum that deal with topics such as the history of Platteville, the element of zinc and its uses, early forms of mining, and transporting lead once it had been mined. Many tools, such as shovels, pickaxes, hammers, and helmets, can be found, as well as minerals from the Mississippi lead and zinc district. They are all so eye-catching that I wouldn’t be surprised if they were used in jewelry nowadays. Miniature replicas of the empire mine, the mill, and the roaster to show how they work exist here, as well. And one of the coolest relics in the museum, in my opinion, is the sextant on a tall, wooden tripod, which was used to read the stars in order to navigate. It sits in a replica of an office, possibly one used by Lorenzo Bevans, the man who founded the mine.
The mine itself is 50 feet underground, and when there has been a lot of heavy rain, it can often times flood in the lowest sections, which I got to experience. Yay, Midwest weather! The mining museum provides the hard hats.
There are no elevators to get you up or down, of course, so you have to use many many stairs to get in and out. And if you have asthma, good luck…
Back in its hay day, the town used this big hole in the ground to mine for lead and zinc. Miners would often work in groups in order to get work done. One example is that one man would hold a large metal spike to a wall of the mine, and another man would hammer at the chisel, creating a hole in one of the walls. Once sufficiently large enough, a miner would use gun powder as a type of explosive to form an even larger hole in the wall. Before lighting the explosive, he would yell “fire in the hole,” which is where the famous phrase came from, or so I was told by my tour guide, and the other miners near him would have to get a short distance away from the explosive.
After new technology had been invented, not only did miners get to use types of drills instead of chisels and hammers to form holes in the mine walls, but they were also able to use real dynamite instead of simple gun powder. However, before lighting the dynamite, every man would have to evacuate the mine entirely, and the miner, who would actually set fire to the explosive, would have to run quickly before it exploded. After the dust had cleared, it was one man’s responsibility to go back into the mine before anyone else to move some of the smaller stones to create a path and to ensure that no other rocks would fall from the ceiling. This man was paid the most out of all the other miners because of his very risky job and the fact that helmets were not really a thing just yet.
Due to the mine’s depth within the earth, the miners came up with a few solutions to deal with scarce lighting. Originally, they tried to keep a few candles on the floor of the mine in order to see. But as they would keep moving into new spaces, they found that this did not work so well. Later, they came up with a fire hazard of a solution: attaching candles to their cloth hats. Though this was rather dangerous, it provided some light in their immediate area so that they could work. Eventually, however, lamps were invented, and they were used on the floors and hung from the ceilings, too, providing exceptionally more light for the workers.
After the tour of the mine and the mill, I explored the Rollo Jamison portion of the museum. Jamison was not the man who founded the mine, but rather he was simply a man who collected a lot of things throughout his lifetime. So the two separate museums ultimately do not have a connection beyond sharing nearly the same space.
Among many of the fascinating things in his museum, Jamison collected arrowheads that started his collection in 1905, a picture of the Oscar Mayer Co. workers in 1914, women’s rights posters, 19th century bronze, Japanese horseman, medical instruments, war memorabilia, and even the famous stuffed, boxing squirrels. Additionally, in his collection is a piano that can not only be played normally, but also by pumping the pedals it plays a specific song all by itself. There are also recordings of interviews with soldiers and different musical genre records that can both be selected and played by visitors.
Even if the mine floods in certain areas and leaks from the ceiling when it rains, even if there are a lot of stairs to climb for the mine and Jamison’s museum, The Mining & Rollo Jamison Museum is a must see when you’re visiting Southwest Wisconsin.