The Unending Mountain: The Promise of the Newcastle Coal Mines

The town of Newcastle is situated only some four miles east of Lake Washington. The level of the railroad track at the loading station is some 360 feet above the lake, and the entrance to the main mine is some 410 feet above the lake level. The product of the mine has steadily increased with each improvement in transportation. Last month the run was 14,930 tons of coal, or an average of over 550 tons per day. The main gangway or tunnel of a coal mine is usually nearly horizontal, following the strike. The cheapest mines to work are those where the coal is so elevated in the mountains that a tunnel can be run into the side of the mountain, allowing the loaded cars to be pulled out as easily as empty cars are hauled in.

When work began at Newcastle, four veins were exported to view on the west side of the coal field. After running the gangway into numbers one and two about 3,000 feet, these two veins come together, forming one solid vein, 10 or 11 feet thick. It is estimated that just these veins already exposed could be profitably worked so as to afford 1,000 tons per day for the next 450 years. From what has been exposed, there is little doubt that here is a region nearly ten miles square in which enough coal will be discovered so that 1,000 tons a day can be mined for the next 1,000 years. Such mines as these may well be called inexhaustible.