A structure vital to Vancouver Island mining history might not be doomed for destruction after all. The Morden mine headframe and tipple date to 1913 but remain the last significant signs of the Nanaimo region’s coal industry, where British Columbia’s first successful mining began in 1852.
Located on a provincial park in an NDP-voting region, the site had been neglected by B.C.’s previous Liberal government. But on October 6 the new NDP government announced a $25,000 conservation grant.
While encouraging to the volunteer Friends of Morden Mine Society, the money falls far short of the $2.7 million that a previous engineering study estimated necessary for the structure’s preservation. That amount included $500,000 for emergency repairs.
For years the FMMS website has warned that the structure’s preservation faces “a race against time. The deterioration of concrete components of the headframe and tipple structures is escalating at an alarming rate. Every spring more dislodged chunks of concrete can be found on the ground below the structures and more reinforcing steel becomes exposed to the elements.”
Some 22.5 metres tall and built of concrete-encased steel, the headframe and tipple, which dumped coal into railcars, collectively hold status as one of only three such structures ever built and one of two still standing.
For the rest of this article: http://resourceclips.com/2017/10/10/threatened-b-c-mining-heritage-site-gets-a-new-lease-on-life/