Explosives

Explosives, originally uploaded by mhall209.

Continuing with the history of the area theme I seem to be on is this powder shed. After the easy pickings of gold from the streams and riverswas exhausted, miners in the California gold rush turned to bigger, faster, and more productive ways to find the gold. This shed seems to date back to those days when hard rock mining was practiced with little attention given to the safety of things like we would today.

A friend of ours in his 50's tells stories of his father's exploits as a gold miner. Not too long ago it was common practice around here that when you needed a little extra money, you went and found some gold. His dad did that alot. He remembers as a child his dad always kept a box of dynamite on the floor of his pickup truck. Next to an old salami that rolled around ("in case dad got hungry." The blasting caps were kept in the glove compartment. Our friend talks about riding around in his dads pickup truck with his feet on the case of dynamite!

Times have changed, and we do not store explosives like this. But every now and then an old timer will pass on, and when the family goes through the belongings, the county bomb squad will have to be called in because of some old explosives! In my days on the volunteer fire department we were called in because someone had found a container of 100 year old nitro glyceryn. It went boom! (Under controlled circumstances, of course!)