Lompoc, California
December 13, 1938
THE BALAAM MINE
By A.G. Balaam
It,
of course, appeared very strange to me to be called upon by the Johns-Manville
Corporation, to give some of the facts of the opening, of what we now know as
the Celite Mine. However, I am very glad to give you such facts, in
regard to the early mining of the material in your mine, as comes to my memory
or I have at hand.
In
going over the situation it might be of interest to your Company to know of the
early development of your property located here at Lompoc, outside of the mining, exclusively.
I
was eight years old when my family, (father, mother and brothers) landed in
Lompoc in October 1878. Previously to that time, during the year 1877, my
father had come to this Lompoc Colony and had purchased a tract of land (tracts
No. 106 & 107 Mission & Vieja Ranchos, approximately 600 – 650 acres),
on which now is located your mine, and paid the sum of $1200 for the property,
and as I said before, he moved his family and occupied these premises in
October 1878.
I
well remember the first day we camped here on these premises in a tent which we
put up, because it was on the day that I had the last ague chill of my
life. We came from the County of
Tulare in the State of California, and at that
time all the people had chills and fever during the summer time, and our family
were not fortunate enough to escape either.
The
first house we built was a common California
house located right near the entrance of your upper road, to what we called the
upper canyon, at that time. During that Fall we cleared some land from
brush and wild mustard, and by way of information at this point, I wish to say
the wild mustard on the virgin land in that canyon at that time reaches
proportions where children of my age were able to climb the stalks on branches
put out from the main stem, which grew to a height of fourteen to sixteen feet.
We
used these mustard stalks as fish poles to catch fish in Miguelito Creek, which
at that time flowed a good stream of water, and was abounding in trout.
During
that first year, we could stand in our doorway (in the house just before
described) and with our rifles, shot deer for what meet we had use. That
first year we grew a crop of about twelve acres of pink beans and on this
virgin soil the yield was forty sacks per acre. These beans were sold at
$1.00 per hundred pounds; this being the best price obtainable at that
time. The beans were hauled for delivery over a rough cumbersome road, by
team and wagon, to the Lompoc Landing which was about three miles north of the
mouth of the Santa Ynez river.
Now
getting down to the mining operations of this mine, my father had always looked
upon your mine and your deposit as “The Old White Hills”, which in his opinion,
was not worth the taxes he was called on to pay. As I grew up, and went
through school, I had taken up a course in mineralogy and geology, and thru my
reading on these subjects, had discovered that infusorial earth, or kieselguhr
was mined from the beds of the lakes of Germany and was taken thru a
flotation process and put upon the market as insulating for heat.
In
the latter part of the year, my first wife’s father and other people about us,
had discovered that by taking small blocks of this infusorial earth and wrapping
wire about it, leaving enough wire extended for a handle that the material
could be dropped into kerosene and it would absorb enough kerosene almost
instantly so that it could be used for the purpose of lighting fires. This
practice became quite common among the people of our immediate locality. Seeing
the usefulness of the material for this purpose, my wife’s father,(John
Bradley) made up a goodly number of these fire lighters and started north to
sell them to people who cared to use them. He sold a goodly number and a
gentleman in Salinas, I do not recall his name, took one of these fire lighters
to San Francisco where it came into the hands of Captain William Barrow, who at
that time was grinding and using magnesite, mixed with tulle fibre, for the insulation
of steam pipes and boiler coverings. Captain Barrow tested this material,
obtained this fire lighter, and found that it would take the place of
magnesite, was easier ground, and had as much resistance to heat, or more than
magnesite.
Captain
Barrow first wrote me a letter inquiring in regard to the quantity of the
material, and as to whether or not it could be obtained in sufficient
quantities for his use. This letter was immediately answered, and upon
receiving this answer Captain Barrow came down to Lompoc to interview me in regard to mining
and furnishing him infusorial earth for his purposes.
Upon
his visit, in February 1893, my brother John F. Balaam and myself, entered into
an agreement with Captain Barrow to furnish him during that year, 1500 tons (in
the raw) sacked and delivered to the shipping point at the price of $7.00 per
ton. This contract was based upon the condition that Captain Barrow
should be furnished a carload of this raw material for the purpose of a test,
and I, with my own hands, dug from a bluff at that time about forty feet high
and situated about 150 or 200 feet south of your present brick warehouse or
“Ten Hill” as you now designate it. This material was dug out of the bank
at that point and it was very wet. However, we sacked it up immediately
and on May 12, 1893 shipped it to San
Francisco and upon its arrival there, Captain Barrow
placed it on a rack of some kind and soon dried it out to a consistency where
he could grind it with his grinder. This he did, and with the combination
of this infusorial earth and the tulle fibre which he gathered from the sloughs
of the San Joaquin river, he made a mix which
in his opinion was better than the magnesite and tulle fibre mix he had been
using. He then notified us that the material was very acceptable, and we
could go on with our contract with him.
Of
course my brother and I were green-horns in the mining of infusorial earth, but
previously had had some experience in hard rock mining and knew the effects of
different grades of powder and what might be expected by explosion of each. We
knew we had to rely on the mining of this material, by blasting and throwing
down the material from the bluff in as large chunks as possible, and doing the
same without the necessity of shattering the material to any extent. Our
method was to put men to work on these large chunks and with shaper tools and
wedges, break the larger chunks into smaller chunks which might be hauled into
the drying yard and have the water dried from the material in as short a time
as possible. This we realized was the only method and means by which we
could possibly hope to have the material bleached out and put in condition
where it would not contain such an amount of moisture that the material would
be useless and could not be ground by the mill.
We
selected, the location for mining above named, from the fact that there was a
tall perpendicular bluff, and the lamina of the material had an angle so that
by putting our blasts back behind the bluff eight or ten feet, it would break
loose and lift the material, at that point, and dump it off over the edge of
the bluff. This method was chosen from the fact that the slope of the seams of
the material were down from the location of the blast and thus aided materially
in permitting the large chunks blasted loose from the mass, to drop to the
bottom of the perpendicular bluff.
Of
course there is what we term “overburden” over all the solid deposits of
diatomaceous earth more or less, and at this particular point where we began
mining there was less overburden to be removed than any other point we could
find in the deposit. This was another reason why we selected this
particular location. At that time we had no other method to remove the
overburden, than to do it by hand work or by some means which we could devise
to scrape it from the surface of the deposit.
We
devised a scraper consisting of a plank of tough pine wood, ten feet long, one
foot wide and two inches thick, and had a blacksmith put a steel cutter in
front of this plank, reaching up about six inches on the plank and extending
down below the plank about one-quarter of an inch. Then on the back of
this plank we put three pieces of scrap steel, perpendicular, and near the ends
of the plank, one on each end at the back of the plank and one in the
middle. The one in the middle was extended above the top of the plank and
a lug was placed there to receive holes that we had drilled into the tongue of
the scraper. This tongue was about eight feet long and on the end of the
tongue next to the holes, were fastened two chains, one on each side of the
tongue which was connected with bolt-eyes fastened to the scraper plank, and
the tongue had holes bored in it at different locations so that these holes
would drop down over the lug, before mentioned, and make a scraper when pulled
that would go into a rigid position and take hold of the overburden and drag it
down the hill where it could be tossed over the bluff. This scraper could
be dumped by lifting the tongue from the lug when the scraper would fall, and
drag over the material, permitting the material to remain in the position it
was at that point.
Here
we had wagons which were loaded by hand labor with this overburden and hauled
away from that position and dumped into a gulch, which existed at that time
under your brick shed. Thus we kept the place under the bluff clean at
all times to receive the good material which was blasted loose and dumped over.
The
scraper above described, was kept at all times on the top of the bluff, and we
had erected a strong post, fastened to a dead man in the ground further up the
hill, from where we were operating the scraper, and attached to that post a
pulley thru which pulley we ran a good strong hemp rope which was attached to
the scraper and extended from the pulley to the bottom of the hill so that when
the team on the top of the bluff scraped the overburden from a position above
the bluff to the bluff edge, a team below took hold of the rope at that point
below and pulled the scraper back up the hill worked admirably for us and
served our purposes well.
Thru
the arrangement we made with Captain William Barrow, he practically became the
selling agent for this material all over the world, and the contract which we
made with him shortly after we began mining, ran for a period of ten years, and
as I said before, this agreement provided that he take and dispose of a minimum
of 1500 tons the first year, and if I remember correctly, the next three years
the minimum was placed at 2000 tons and thereafter there was to be a minimum of
3500 tons. My brother and I, of course, under this arrangement became the
production plant for that outlet of the material. Captain Barrow took his minimum
and a little more the first year, and thereafter took the minimum specified in
the contract and some years more, up to 1898. At that time, there
appeared upon the scene a man by the name of Rose who said he represented large
eastern interests and stated that if he could get Captain Barrow and ourselves
to enter into a contract with him for his principals, that he could take
tonnage of the material in a large way, but nothing came out of this matter.
Of
course it was necessary for this mining to be done in the summertime when rains
were over, and up to the time rains began again, by reason of the fact that all
of our drying was done by sunshine, so each year we would start our mining
operations as soon as we thought the rain was past, and follow out the method
of dumping the large chunks to the bottom of the bluff, (which we were always
careful to keep intact, and cut these chunks into smaller chunks and haul them
out into the drying yard, the location which is now occupied by your Brick
Plant and Mills. These ricks were made as long as we could conveniently
make them, about 2-1/2” wide and from 4 to 5 feet high. We would test this
material in the ricks by weighing on scales, and when we found that the
material, being weighed, was light enough to be sacked, we would sack it and
haul it to the cars at Lompoc and ship it either to San Francisco to Captain
Barrow, or to such points as he might designate in his instructions to us.
Of
course Captain Barrow had limited storing capacity for this material in San
Francisco, and when we first started, we had no storing capacity for winter
use, so the only way we could overcome this lack of storing space was to get
the users of the material to order their supply in the summer time or before
rains began, and store their material at their respective points of use.
Captain Barrow seemed to be very successful in getting the users of the
material to do this. However, we soon saw the necessity of having some
storage capacity ourselves, and so in the year 1895, we built on the grounds
here, a small warehouse 40 to 60 feet, and this we stored to full capacity,
even to the roof, with dried material out of the ricks, so as to have some
dried material for winter use as possible, which we used to sack this material
for the purpose of shipping. After sacking the material in these containers,
we hired anyone in Lompoc who had teams and
cared to use them for our purpose, to haul this material and place it in the
cars at the depot at Lompoc.
We contracted with these people to haul it and place it in the cars at so much
per ton. The material being very light, we always tried, if possible, to
have the railroad company called furniture cars (cars used for transporting
furniture), because in order to ship a carload of 30 tons of this material, in
the manner we were shipping, it required the largest cars we could possibly
get, and the railroad was very kind and considerate of our problem and nearly always
furnished us such cars. In order to place the 30 tons in these cars, it
was necessary to do the placing in an orderly manner and we provided a man at
the cars to place this material for the teamster who tossed it in at the door.
The
first year, my brother and I did this mining ourselves and hired a crew of men
to do the same, but after the first year we contracted the mining of the
material under our supervision at the rate of $1.00 per ton delivered in the
ricks, and paid at the rate of $1.00 per ton to have the material sacked and
hauled to the delivery point. There was always one of us present at all times
to watch the kind and class of material being mined, and make a proper
selection so far as we had means to do, of the right kind of material for
commercial purposes. We had no laboratory and we depended entirely upon
microscopic tests of the material. We had a very powerful microscope and
watched the material as being mined from the different lamina of the deposit
and if the slide from the material showed the proper diatoms, we passed
it. So far as specific gravity was concerned, we had no means of testing
the specific gravity of the material, but depended upon the weight of the
material on the scales to determine whether or not this particular feature of
the matter would meet requirements. However, we had the best luck in the
world in regard to these matters, because I do not recall that we ever had a
single carload of material rejected by reason of the fact that it did not meet
requirements.
Of
course, when we started to mine this material, we were put to necessity of
hauling water from Miguelito Creek in a large wooden tank for the purpose of
domestic water at the location of the mine. During the second year of our
mining operations we dug a well four by four and about eighty-three feet deep,
if I remember correctly, and curbed this well with redwood curbing. We
discovered sufficient water for domestic purposes and this furnished all of the
water we required for our operations after that time. We pulled this water
from the well by the old-fashioned method of the ‘Old Oaken Bucket’ and the
wheel and rope.
During
our mining operations, we made certain tests of the deposit by boring holes and
examining the material taken from these holes under the microscope to discover
whether or not the material carried the right kind of diatoms. We put these
borings in the particular mine on Hill 20 which we operated, and also made
borings and tests in our fashion. We tested the deposit lying northeast
of your present Mill, and as I understand it you call that 17 now. We found
this material of fair enough grade for our purposes, but from the fact that the
dip of the plane of the lamina was away from the bluff, instead of toward the
bluff, under our method of mining we never attempted to mine for our purposes
in that location.
Now
getting down to the method used by Captain William Barrow, in the preparation and
use of this material for his purposes, of course this sketch which I am now
about to give, is all done from memory of what I noted on separate visits to
his plant in San Francisco.
He
had an old-fashioned grinder which looked to me like an old magnified inverted
coffee mill. However with this mechanism, he secured a fairly fine grind
of his material. Previously to the time that he had discovered this
material for his use, he had been using a fair grade of magnesite. He took our
ground material, and if I remember correctly, used a small percentage of
magnesite with this material in the production of the manufactured products
which he was putting out at that time. He was put to the extremity of
finding some sort of a fibre to mix with this material, so that he could use
the same for the purpose of wrapping a coating of the material round steel
pipes, boilers, etc. He hit upon the idea that he could use tulle fibre
for this purpose and experimented with the material and found out that such
could be done.
He
then employed men with boats to go into the sloughs along the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers where these tulle grow in
profusion. These men would row their boats into the tulle, bend the tulle
over their boats and pick the fibre from the branches. They would then place in
sacks and carry it back to Captain Barrow for his purposes. With this mix
he would plaster the certain pipes, boilers, etc and with a cotton fabric cut
in strips, he would wrap this plaster securely to the pipes or whatever he
might be trying to plaster with his material. At one time I suggested to him
that it might be possible for him to use a small amount of aluminum sulphate in
his mix to act as a binder, but whether he did this or nor I do not know.
Both
Captain Barrow and ourselves stopped operations in this line along about the
year 1898, and Captain Barrow released us from our contract by reason of the
fact that he was getting ready to retire and told us that if we wanted to go
ahead with anybody else, we could do so. This was after we found that Rose had
failed to produce parties who were interested in taking material in a larger
way.
My
brother and I had been paying our father for the mining privileges of his mine
at the rate of 10 cents per ton royalty, on the material mined and sold, so the
matter was held in abeyance at this point for some little time, and in the
meantime a man by the name of Geo. B Hanneman had been working on a deal with
my father unbeknownst to my brother and myself) and finally secured an option
on the mine which he turned over to a Mr. Mason and the mine was sold at that
time to a new company. Of course when Mr. Mason got ahold of the mine, he then
put up mills, driers, etc. and went at the mining of the material in a much
larger way. However, the fact remains that my brother and myself and Captain
William Barrow of San Francisco are the real pioneers in this industry, and it
was thru our original energy and confidence in the value of the material that
this deposit was first introduced upon the market and became known as one of
the largest deposits of infusorial earth in the world.
A.G. Balaam
