Longtime Parkite Mark Danninger will attempt to cram 100 years into one hour when he gives his lecture titled “Progression of the Mining Industry in the Park City District” on Wednesday, Jan. 11, at the Park City Museum Education and Collections Center.
The free event will serve as an industrial timeline from the late 1800s to the late 1900s, according to Danninger, a mining engineer with more than 30 years experience in underground mining, maintenance, welding and project management.
“What I want to convey is how the mining industry developed in terms of technology over the decades,” he said.
The lecture starts in 1868, with the identification of what became the Flagstaff Mine by troops of the U.S. Army stationed in Salt Lake City at Ft. Douglas, according to Danninger.
“The early discoveries of ore were done by classic prospectors with picks and shovels who looked at rock outcrops, followed mineralization, dug trenches and exploration pits, collected and evaluated samples,” he said. “Before too long it was determined that there was quite a discovery on hand.”
The discovery of ore generated a lot of buzz and interest not only with people who wanted to do more prospecting, but with people who wanted to be investors and stakeholders, Danninger said.
“That led to a lot of interests that would contribute significantly in terms of financing,” he said. “And that moved things away from the pick and shovel approach to actually getting more mechanized mining equipment.”
Investors paid a good penny to get that equipment to Utah from the East Coast, according to Danninger.
“The railroad network was quite limited, so things needed to be disassembled into parts and hauled over the plains by wagons,” he said. “But at the same time, investors who paid for the equipment would also negotiate a percentage of the claims.”
That’s what is called ‘grubstaking,’ Danninger said.
“Prospectors needed money to buy food, equipment and clothing and then would give up a percentage of whatever they found to their investors,” he said. “That approach continued throughout the decades as different mines were discovered and developed.”
The next big technological development took place in late 1869 with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, Danninger said.
Nearly 20 years later, the Rio Grande line from Salt Lake City to Park City was completed, he said.
“That line was used to haul out ore to smelters that were in the Salt Lake Valley,” he said.
As advanced railroad technology was making its way into Park City, other methodology for hauling material was being developed.
Those new methods included aerial trams and steam-driven water pumps.
“As mines got deeper, they were having problems with the water inflow,” Danninger said. “So they needed ways to get the water out. They came up with the pumps. And the aerial trams or the predecessors to the modern-day ski chair lifts.”
The water pumps led to the digging of drainage tunnels, which the Park City Municipal Corporation still uses today for drinking water distribution, Danninger said.
A few years later, an increase in technology introduced electricity, which replaced steam power, and by the 1970s and 1980s, the railroads were replaced by trucks and semis, he said.
“We’ve had multiple changes throughout the past 100 years, and I think a lot of people would be interested in this,” he said. “My hope is that this lecture will help people start on an educational journey.”
Danninger also hopes that people will use this lecture to see mining as a requirement to sustain society’s way of life and its future.
“I want people to think about how we are pursuing battery-powered vehicles, and want to reduce carbon emissions and have renewable energy, because electric vehicles require hundreds of pounds of aluminum, thousands of pounds of copper, several thousand pounds of lithium for the batteries, as well as nickel and steel and cadmium,” he said. “And that stuff has got to come from somewhere. We can’t grow them on a farm.”
Danninger feels a majority of the world’s population is completely removed from mining, which is a concern.
“That makes it more difficult for mining companies to do their business,” he said. “So, this lecture is to hopefully help people recognize that mining is still required, and will continue to be required and is still going on.”