Miners use a pneumatic drill deep underground. (Photo courtesy of the Negaunee Historic Society)

By VIRGINIA

PAULSON

Negaunee Historical

Society

NEGAUNEE — Mary Tippett Andes interviewed Glen Bjork of Negaunee for this article about underground mining.

Glenn Bjork started working part time at the Princeton Mine in Gwinn in March of 1943, while he was still in high school. He recalled earning $6 a day.

He clearly remembered his first day underground. When you went down into the mine it was like you were in a new world. You had your light on your hat and there were a few light bulbs along the main drift that were muddy and dirty and there were a lot of wet places.

In August 1943, he joined the U.S. Navy and spent most of World War II aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. When he returned home he started working at the Mather A in 1946.

He recalled an incident when miners broke through from the Mather A into the old Nelson Mine which was in the area of the National Guard Armory which was flooded. He recalled that as being very spooky.

Everyone thought he was going to be another “Barnes Hecker” referring to the 1926 cave -in of the Barnes Hecker Mine west of Ishpeming that claimed the lives of 51 men. We had to work in that for several days. We had to roll our boots as high as they would go and the underground locomotives were splashing through water. We had to roll our boots up almost to our knees. We didn’t think too much about it, we went there everyday and did our job.splashing through water wonderin when it would stop coming in, and finally they sent everyone home.

A skeleton crew put up some dams as a precaution against further flooding and the water finally petered out. With a chuckle he said, “That in the meantime the men were able to take in the ski tournament.”

In the fall of 1947, Bjork went to sink the shaft at the Mather B, and later was part of the crew that opened the sixth and seventh levels in preparation for mining. At each level, “plats” or large open areas were created.

Plats were lined in concrete, well lit and designed to provide efficient dumping of ore from underground trains into a trench. From there the ore was scraped into a measuring pocket and dumped into 14-ton skips for hoisting to the surface.

The plat area was often referred to by the men as “out shaft” as this is where they would gather at the end of their shift to wait for the 70-man double-deck cage to lift them back up to the surface.

Glen Bjork retired from mining in 1987. One part of his job that he liked was opening up the new territory underground. He recalled putting in a 225 foot “raise,” which was a vertical passageway in the Mather B.with his partner Jim Baldini. It was a raise from the 9th to the 8th level, with a modern device called an Alamac Raise Machine built by Sede engineers.

You could sit on the rig and you wouldn’t have to climb. With the old way of raising you went up ladders and you built a stage with two poles and a plank, that is what you drilled off of.

After you drilled you went down and got your dynamite and caps and then you went back and loaded up your holes, then hook up and come back down. If you were using electric charges, you would go back up there.

That was one of the most dangerous jobs. For a man with the title of “miner” their job consisted of blasing and scraping out the dirt pile and putting up sets of timber.

This process is also called “drifting” moving forward horizontally into an ore body. Miners were paid a “company account” or a set rate along with a bonus for footage. That footage bonus led to some of the miners taking chances. Bjork said that there were some blasting accidents possibly caused by fuses being cut too short, or the improper use of dynamite and blasting caps.

But most accidents were caused by slipping and falling or the falling of ground. Bjork learned the safest way of blasting from the old time miners. Each blast would consist of drilling 10-25 holes, depending on the amount of ore and rock in the face of the unbroken rock. and loading them with dynamite and set in a blasting pattern.

An old miner said some people cut off too much fuse, the old timer always left them 8 feet. And then we would use a sparkless lighter that resembled a sparkler that a child uses on the fourth of July. Bjork used to time it by lighting Ssssssssshhht! It caught! he did that for each one. Providing you didn’t cut it too short, you had plenty of time to get out of the way. You were only allowed to use one lighter to ignite the fuses and when it was gone you had to get out. They claimed it took five years for an experienced miner to learn the mining game.

Later on, they began to use electric caps. which were safer. You could go to an electric switch box a safe distance away to detonate. After the shaft was sunk for the Mather B, there was new ground to be broken. During that time the B shaft was being sunk, miners from the A shaft of the Mather in Ishpeming, were driving in a drift to connect with the Mather B Glenn Bjork and his partner Sam Carilli, joined the Mather B crew tunneling toward the Mather A.

We were going from the sixth level of the Mather B and we had 400 feet to go. Sam and I had the honor of blasting it through to the Mather A. When the smoke cleared.there was a bunch from the Mather A on that side and we shook hands.

That was quite a piece of engineering. It was two miles or more and we hit it right on. The elevation ws right and the sides were right. Bjork described the color of the rock he saw underground. Lots of reds, light yellow, ochre. Specular hematite that is a hard ore and it that glistens.

Bjork said, “Lots of times I thought about how long that rock had been there. Just think, from the time the good Lord made the earth and the water got trapped when the earth was forming and cooling. I thought about it a lot of times. In fact we used to kid a little bit sometimes after a blast, and clean out the cut and say, “first time a man ever walked in here which was true.

Nobody else walked here only the good Lord, maybe but otherwise, no one else walked here. Glenn Bjork has a keen eye, an underground mine in Michigan, nobody else will walk there again.