Bell Island Mine #2 Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
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A short skip over water and you are there!
Mining first began on Bell Island in 1895 with surface mining. Underground, or submarine, mining began at the No. 2 mine in 1902 and continued right up until 1949.
Mining ceased altogether on Bell Island in 1966, ending 71 years of an industry that saw 79 million tons of ore extracted and sold worldwide.
There are roughly four billion tons of ore left in the mines, but the industry shut down because of the high cost of getting the ore from the mine to the market.
There were six mines in total during the course of the industry at Bell Island. Four of the mines, numbers 2, 3, 4 and 6, went submarine - meaning the mines actually went under the sea floor. The other two mines (1 and 5) went underground and broke out at the shoreline.
The submarine mines extended roughly two and a half miles under Conception Bay, not really that far from Harbour Grace on the north side of the bay. When the mines closed in 1966 the miners were working more than 4.8 km (3 mi) under the floor of Conception Bay.
Bell Island, in its heyday, went from a population of several hundred to between 12,000 to 14,000. There was a failure in the fishery around the turn of the century, and with the advent of mining on Bell Island, scores of people from fishing communities such as Brigus, Cupids, Harbour Grace and Carbonear left to work in the new industry.
From the beginning of mining until 1914, Bell Island prospered. With the start of World War I, however, a great setback occurred in the industry because one of the main customers for Bell Island had been Germany. During the war there was a brief recovery, only to have another collapse occur in 1918 with the end of war production. Again the mines recovered but when French troops occupied the industrial heartland of Germany, the Ruhr, in an attempt to prevent rearmament there in 1923, another decrease in shipments occurred. Yet a further setback came with the depression of the 1930s; from 1936 to 1959 the mines prospered again. Then competition from new producers who could mine iron ore less expensively gradually led to a decline in markets for Bell Island ore and to the eventual close of the mines in June 1966.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Tbbq Yhpx!
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