I sat down with the owner and cultivator of Treasure House Relics project recently, to discuss mining in Utah. I wanted to know how he got interested in mining, what he knows about Utah's mining history, and for him to share some of the stories with me and us.
"The rock before them is about 550 feet tall. It weighs 700 million kilograms, or about 770,000 tons, twice the weight of the Empire State Building."
I did this as UPR and Morning Edition listeners across the country are reading "Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free." There are so many themes that relate to a state and a region, really, with a long mining history. Accidents in mining are common, and expected. Each day as a miner walks into a mine, there is the chance he or she won't come out the same.
As we look at this incredible experience of 33 men in Chile, I wanted to know more about the experiences of miners in Utah. I went and took a look at the images of Utah's mines, and was fascinated.
What were the conditions like back in the day? I know about the Scofield Disaster, but what other things happened day-to-day in a mine? What was the mining community like? How does the boom and bust of mining affect Utah today?
In my search for more information, I stumbled across Don Winegar. After we conversed over email a couple times, he and his wife, Shauna drove up to Logan one night after work and sat down in the studio to talk to me. Below are clips from that interview.
"We aren't the best men, but Lord, have pity on us," Henriquez begins. It's a simple statement, but it strikes several of the men hard." - Deep Down Dark.
Since then, he's been collecting mine paraphernalia- papers, stock certificates, porcelain dolls from mining sites, coins, bottles, letterhead for cities that no longer exist, images of mining structures around the west. He has this vast collection, and most of it is stored in his man cave. Some of it is in safer areas, but much of it is in a well-guarded man cave.
But what he has done in the last few years is start placing that collection online. He had numerous experiences where he couldn't find much information - be it images or stock certificates or anything else- about mines as a teenager and even recently as an adult, so he's created the place to go for information, which is actually how I found him. His website is called "Treasure House Relics project." He named it this because of a quote given by Abraham Lincoln in about 1862, where Lincoln said, “Utah will yet become the Treasure House of the nation.”
On this site, he has created an "E-museum" where he has images of the items he has collected, as well as items people have allowed him to photograph to include. I found it to be a vast and interesting collection- one that changes the way we think about a museum.
One collection he has is that of accident reports.
We also discussed the boom and bust cycle of Utah, and how it continues today.
One of the most interesting segments in any interview, and this one is no exception, is when I ask a person to tell me something they think is important. It allows people to talk about something I may have missed, or expound on ideas talked about before. Often, this is where some of the most interesting pieces of my interviews come from.
