Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2014 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== The Milwaukee Sentinel 1 June 1959 Mining Disasters In U.P. Recalled ---------------- IRON RIVER, Mich., June 1 (Special) Monday's cave-in and explosive fire in the Sherwood Mine on the Menominee Range brought memories of the Barnes-Hecker, Mansfield and Pabst iron mine disasters to Upper Peninsula residents. Older residents recall them vividly because of the safety campaigns that have been waged in recent years which have reduced fatalities to an extremely low level in an industry as essentially hazardous as underground iron mining. The Barnes-Hecker disaster, Nov. 3, 1926, worst in the 115-year history of the Lake Superior iron mining district, took the lives of 51 men when quicksand and water from a swamp dropped 600 feet into the mine near North Lake. ONLY ONE SURVIVED Water quickly filled the shaft and other levels of the property just outside Ishpeming. Only one man escaped. Bodies of most of the victims were never recovered. Among the victims was the Marquette County mine inspector, William E. Hill, who had been re-elected to a second term only the day before. In 1924, at the Milford Mine on the Cuyuna Range in Minnesota, 41 perished under conditions somewhat like those which caused the tragedy at Barnes-Hecker. Twenty-eight men drowned in the Mansfield Mine, near Crystal Falls, when the waters of the Michi- gamme River poured into the pit in 1893. This was the worst iron mining disaster in the Upper Penin- sula before the Barnes-Hecker tragedy. The Barnes-Hecker disaster followed closely on the emtombing of 40 men for nearly two weeks in the Pabst Mine near Ironwood. All but three were rescued alive from the Pabst, however. Few multiple fatalities have occurred in Upper Peninsula mining properties since the turn of the century. CAGE FELL 662 FEET Among the most tragic were two in Negaunee, where 10 miners were killed and 5 others injured in a 662-foot plunge of a cage to the bottom of the shaft at the Rolling Mill Iron Mine Sept. 20, 1907, and where 10 died in a cave-in at the Ne- gaunee Iron Mine Jan. 7, 1902. Seven were killed at the Hartford Iron Mine, also in Negaunee, May 6, 1911. Worst mine fire disaster in the Upper Peninsula occurred at the Osceola Copper Mine in the Copper Country in September, 1895, when 30 men lost their lives. Intense campaigns by mine operators in the last half-century have led to establishment of modern safety methods that have cut fatality percentages, for the most part, to less than one per 1,000 em- ployes annually in recent years. Non-fatal acci- dents also have declined. ===========================================================================