GT
- The End Of An Era
By
Emilio "Sad Warrior" Cervantes
That's
it.
Schwinn/GT
as you know it is gone at 5:00 p.m. today.
On
Monday morning the only people remaining here will be a select few chosen to be
a "transition team" to move everything to Pacific's Madison, Wisconsin,
headquarters. No
current employee has accepted a permanent position in Wisconsin.
Next year's product (‘02) will be the stuff we designed here.
The ‘03 stuff will be who knows what.
Schwinn and GT will be sold in Wal-Mart and Costco.
Dyno, Robinson and Powerlite are gone. Riteway Distribution is gone.
I
am gone.
The
failure here is of the industry to band together with USA cycling to make the
market grow. There
simply aren't enough buyers of high-quality bikes to sustain the industry as
it exists.
The
average adult bike sold in the U.S. gets ridden once.
Out
Silverado
Mines
By
Chris "Dances With Hornets" Vargas
In
September several activists and Silverado Canyon residents went on a hike to see
the Blue Light Mines in Silverado.
These silver mines were active in the early 1870s and gave Silverado
Canyon its name.
Before 1872 the canyon's name was Canon de la Madera.
We also planned on checking out a trail we all hope to re-establish.
It was a great day for a hike and to explore the mines.
Although
the majority of the participants preferred to view the mines from the outside,
Mike Boeck and I decided to take a closer look.
After crawling into several mine openings that had collapsed, we finally
found an opening that led us to a large system that once had large rooms, but
over time the ceiling of the rooms had collapsed and left only a small crawl
space.
Armed
with a single flashlight, we explored the mine that Mike called "Hell"
because of the inscription he was told about, and we found, above a support beam
that led to the entrance to a network of shafts. Getting
inside was somewhat difficult, and we had to crawl though a small opening on our
bellies.
It
was a surreal feeling inside the mines.
Mike has no fear, but I was a little worried about the integrity of the
mine, as was evident by the debris from past cave-ins.
We crawled into a rather large room in the mine.
While Mike went deep into the bowels of the mine, I waited behind in case
something happened.
Mike took the only flashlight we had and I was left in the dark, a
darkness that was so complete that I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.
Mike
kept calling out to me so he could get a sense of the direction he was going.
He found more shafts and called out to me to let me know his discoveries.
I felt a sense of relief once I heard Mike's voice get closer.
He had returned to where I was from a different shaft that connected to
the one he had entered.
We
decided that we'd better rejoin the group and agreed that we would return to
the mines better equipped.
I told Mike that I would be proud to have him as a confined space
inspector, the job I do, because of his fearlessness.
If he can crawl around in the tight spaces of the mine, he would have no
problem doing it in storm drains.
Mine
History
Compiled
by Mike "Rockdad" Boeck
Although
Mexicans had probably mined the area previously for many years, records show
that on August 12, 1877, H.C. Purcell, G.F. Slankerd, Henry Casida and Thomas
Smith filed a mining claim after Casida "discovered" the abandoned
mine site.
They found blue and white quartz ore containing silver which assayed out
at about $60 a ton in the Pine Canyon area and named their claim the Southern
Belle.
The rush of prospectors didn't start until the next spring however,
following published reports of the news. Eventually 500 locations/claims were
made in the area, organized as the Santa Rosa Mining District.
U.S.
Marshal J.D. Dunlap staked a claim up in the Pine/Halfway Canyons area and named
it the Blue Light Mine. This was the most famous and productive of the mines in
the Silverado area.
What we know today as the Blue Light Mine is actually a consolidation of
numerous former claims: the Dunlap or Blue Light, the Flanigan, and the
Harvey and Thistlewaite.
Henry S. Thistlewaite exhibited the first ore samples from the Silverado
area in Anaheim just before Christmas 1877.
Pharez
Allen Clark, of Anaheim, laid out a townsite at the fork of Pine and Madera
Canyons and called it Silverado.
He was Silverado's first postmaster. Soon the town boasted three hotels,
three stores, a post office, two blacksmith shops, two meat markets and seven
saloons.
The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors established Silverado as a township
and Sam Shrewsbury was elected Justice of the Peace while Isaac Harding was
elected Constable.
Peak
population of the canyon during mining activities was between 1000-1500
residents and two daily stagecoaches ran to Los Angeles while three ran to Santa
Ana.
The
New York Mine was dug into the north side of Pine Canyon.
It filled with water and another tunnel was run up at an angle from below
to drain the main shaft.
An Irish worker was killed in this tunnel when the water broke through
the ceiling from the tunnel above.
Names of other mines in the area included the Mountain View,
Loring, Gold Hill, Ophir, and Excelsior claims.
Some
slabs of silver "as thick as a book and as large as a chair seat" were
found in the mines but this was the exception, not the rule.
The fractured geological structure of the mountains in this area makes
mining difficult and expensive.
After spending huge sums of cash on equipment and labor, most mine
operations were struggling and by 1881 Silverado was abandoned except for a few
diehards. Later sporadic attempts to wrest the silver ore from this rugged area
lasted into the 1930s but the expense of operations eventually made the mining
unprofitable.
This information was gathered from books by Jim Sleeper, Leo J. Friis, Terry E. Stephenson, and articles from the Anaheim Gazette circa the late 1870s and early 1880s.
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The 2001 Leadville 100 Somber Holiday Thoughts
GT - The End Of An Era And The Silverado Mines Hike Closing Thoughts
