• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

The Miner and the Con

Posted on: Sunday, 16 April 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Roberta Forsell, The Montana Standard, Butte

Apr. 15--You could say the Mountain Con taught Floyd Bossard all he knows about mine ventilation, and that's quite a lot.

The retired consulting engineer has traveled the world sharing lessons learned at the Con, mainly on making sure miners have enough cool air in which to work.

"I've seen the bowels of the earth in 150 different spots, and I consider myself extremely lucky," Bossard said.

He's consulted from Alaska to Chile, the Philippines, Australia, Nova Scotia, New Guinea, Mexico, Indonesia and throughout the states.

But all the while, he never forgot where he got his start. So when the chance came to pay tribute to the Con by lighting its headframe, Bossard and his wife Margaret, along with friends Bob and Pauline Poore, stepped up with $14,000 to light it and finish the headframe restoration work. Butte-Silver Bow and NorthWestern Energy teamed to restore electricity to the site and that work was completed on Friday.

"This project here is a loving memory," Bossard said during an interview at the Centerville mine yard, as he stared up at the massive structure, eyes gleaming with respect and gratitude.

And the Poores, both lifelong Butte residents, said "you bet" right away when Bossard asked them to help support the project.

"We love the headframes, mine dumps and other vestiges of our great mining history, and we try to always have in mind what the Butte Hill has done for us and our generation," Bob Poore said in an interview several months ago.

Poore never worked underground, but said he had "close connections to Butte mining above the ground level" through his law practice.

His father and brother were also lawyers, and the family firm represented the North Butte Mining Co., which owned the Speculator and Granite Mountain mines. They also did legal work for mines around Philipsburg and in Jefferson and Madison counties.

"I'm very proud of what little part I did have in it," a grateful Poore said of his mining connection. "We worked above ground in the legal affairs and the leases and production agreements." Bossard, an Anaconda native, still remembers his first underground shift in 1948 when he and other student miners were sent to clean up around railroad tracks on the 3,400 level.

"It was hotter than hell," Bossard said.

When they broke for lunch in another part of the mine and started talking with the old-timers about the suffocating heat, the greenhorns learned two important lessons they'd never forget: Never advance beyond the "good air" (they had inadvertently moved into a space that wasn't adequately ventilated) and always carry plenty of ice water.

"They took very good care of us that first shift," Bossard said.

He went on to specialize in mine ventilation and air conditioning, with the Con his training ground and laboratory.

"From a professional standpoint, it was the foundation of my career," he said. "There's no place in the United States that matched this, and I loved it." With a mile-long shaft, the Mountain Con is Butte's deepest mine and one of the first in the world to be air conditioned.

"This was the most difficult mine in the camp to ventilate because of its depth," Bossard explained.

The air temperature coming off the rocks was 163 degrees F -- "like an oven" -- and the challenge was "to push enough cold air through so the men could work." Following graduation in 1950 with a geological engineering degree from the School of Mines, Bossard, now 77, spent 18 years with the Anaconda Minerals Co., working his way up to chief ventilation and industrial hygiene engineer.

Then after earning a master's degree in environmental health from the University of Cincinnati, Bossard started his consulting business and also taught at Montana Tech for 10 years.

He says mining people are "cut differently than the average citizen population" and speculates that's probably because of the difficult and dangerous nature of the work.

"There's a camaraderie among the mining people and Butte especially," he said, which is yet another reason he's pleased to be able to light the headframe in honor of the thousands who worked at the Con. He also had the words, "Mile High, Mile Deep" stenciled on the shop at the headframe base.

"This will be a beacon on the hill if it's done right because it sits on a dark spot," Bossard said. "With no conflicting lighting, it should stand out extraordinarily on this hillside." Butte is lucky to still have all these frames, he said.

"Typically, after a mining district subsides, they take these headframes down and they're shipped to other places in the world," he said. "I know of no other place in the world that's comparative."

-----

To see more of The Montana Standard, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mtstandard.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Montana Standard, Butte

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

NWEC,

Source: The Montana Standard

More News in this Category