’08 calendars mailed

   Hopefully you have received your 2008 Camp Tuscazoar events calendar. If you did not receive one, you can join the Foundation for only $15 and we will send one to you. A few copies are available in the museum while supplies last.
   Also, if your business would like to support Camp Tuscazoar, we would be happy to discuss advertising possibilities. The advertisers displayed on our calendar make it possible for us to send free event calendars to more than 500 members and campers. Please help us continue this tradition by providing a few advertising dollars for the camp. Scout groups can list their yearly campouts on the calendar for only $5. The deadline for the 2009 calendar is Sept. 1.

Timbering project near Roost complete

   Visitors hiking to Buzzard’s Roost and campers spending a weekend in Troop1 Cabin will likely notice the after-effects of the timbering project completed last fall. This project raised the matching funds needed to finalize a land acquisition by the Camp Tuscazoar Foundation in 2006. This 241-acre purchase enabled the Foundation to regain ownership of Buzzard’s Roost, Troop 1 Cabin, the Zoarite Iron Mines and the Stone Memorial Lodge. We appreciate your patience and cooperation during this project.

Visitors pose with the Camp Tuscazoar sign this past summer. The sign was temporarily removed during the timbering.
 

The Eagle Hill Coal Mine at Camp Tuscazoar

By David Tschantz

   Most Tuscazoar campers have long been familiar with the Zoarite Iron Mines located on the hillside just south of Dover Dam. However, research on the Ohio Department of Natural Resources website recently uncovered another mine that once existed in that area on the property of what is now Camp Tuscazoar. This mine is known as the Eagle Hill Mine and produced bituminous coal from a seam common along the Tuscarawas River known as Middle Kittanning #6. While the Zoarite mine was known as a kidney mine (because they mined "kidney ore" from it using an early form of strip mining), the Eagle Hill Mine was an underground deep coal mine.
   It is not known when this mine was opened, but records show it was closed and abandoned in 1902 as oil and natural gas began to replace coal as a fuel for industry. The map shown here in Figure 1 was drawn in April of 1902 and obtained from the ODNR. It indicates that there were at least eight entryways to the mine known as drift entries, plus several shafts for ventilation and water drainage purposes. The Eagle Hill Mine was called a drift mine because miners entered it by tunneling into the hillsides above water level rather than digging a shaft down from the surface to the coal seam. Each entry would have been well-timbered to keep rock and dirt from cascading down from the hillside above and blocking the entry. The 5 man entries were probably from 8 to 9 feet in width, and the 4 rail entries would have been around 12 feet in width. As the map shows, the coal was not dug out of the seam entirely. Rather, this mine used the pillar-and-breast method of mining, where pillars of coal were left in place to help keep the rock overhead from collapsing onto miners and mine equipment as they dug coal out of the "breast", or face, of the rock. These coal pillars were probably reinforced with timbers, particularly in larger rooms or areas where tunnels met. The pillars, as seen on the map, were not continuous, but interrupted by openings called "breakthroughs", which allowed for passage and ventilation through the mine.
   The map also appears to show that at least four of the entrances were big enough to permit miners to lay rail into the mine so large chunks of mined coal could be brought out in small mine carts to a crushing and sorting tipple which was situated just downstream from the entryways. Figure 2 shows mine cart typically used for this purpose. Note that these carts were constructed so that they were easily emptied by operating a lever on the side of the cart that would open the end of the cart for easy dumping. Figure 3 shows a miner at his task in a mine similar to the Eagle Hill Mine. A rude mine office was probably located at the sorting tipple as well. The mine carts could have been hauled by mules, horses, oxen, goats or even dogs. At the sorting tipple the coal is thought to have been crushed into smaller pieces, cleaned and sorted, and then dumped into larger carts for transport to the loading tipple at the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad which ran along the river below the mine. Some mines open in those days employed "slate-picker" boys at the tipples to separate slate and other non-flammable rock from the coal as it was being crushed and sorted.
   The mine is listed on the map as having been owned and operated by "W.R. Jones." Almost nothing is known about this person or the company.

See "Eagle Hill Coal Mine"…Page 4