The Jennie Mine was a beautiful mill and headframe structure that was demolished by its owner because he couldn’t get insurance on an apartment complex in California because his insurance carrier was concerned that he owned the Jennie Mine and its accompanying structures in Utah.
However, the involvement of the UAMRP is fully documented in this article, where the terms anticipatory demolition and anticipatory documentation are first coined…
Most abandoned mines are almost by definition historic and many are important enough to be
eligible for the National Register. Reclamation often means substantial alteration,
if not total obliteration of the mine, as hazards are eliminated or the land is
restored to its pre-mining condition.
While the Utah Abandoned
Mine Reclamation Program (UAMRP) values history and respects the need for
preservation of our mining heritage, it recognizes that doing so comes at a cost.
While there are many historic mines with sophisticated architecture
and technologically complex processing facilities that deserve the complete
HABS/HAER treatment, many National Register eligible mines consist of a
simple hole in the ground. Perhaps it is shored up with some timbers and maybe
it has a simple windlass for a hoist. Many historic mines were low tech
operations. Old time miners were thrifty sorts, often scavenging equipment and
structures from one mine for use on another. Even historically significant, highly
productive mines can have little in the way of extant features that merit the
detailed recording that goes into a HABS/HAER package.
The UAMRP has managed to sidestep HABS/HAER recording as
mitigation in recent years, largely corresponding to the shift away from coal mine
reclamation to noncoal projects. Coal reclamation, which may sometimes
completely obliterate a mine and return it to pre-mining conditions, obviously
carries a high potential for “adverse effects” requiring mitigation. Coal mines in
Utah also tend to have more surface facility development and retain more
structural integrity than their noncoal counterparts, making documentation a likely
and logical form of effect mitigation.
On the other hand, the UAMRP noncoal reclamation efforts have been
constrained by the requirements of SMCRA. Most Utah noncoal reclamation is
limited to shaft and adit closures (i.e. SMCRA Priority 1 sites). Utah noncoal
mine sites typically have few structural elements and poor integrity. The
UAMRP tries to be judicious in its closure design, choosing walls or grates that
can be installed to avoid important historic elements of a mine when possible and
limiting disturbance (see, for example, Rohrer 1997). More destructive closures
(backfills) are reserved as much as possible for non-Register-eligible sites and
low integrity sites. Earthwork disturbance is kept surgical and limited. As a
consequence, the Utah SHPO has tended to see most noncoal mine closures as
having “no effect” or “no adverse effect” in the context of Section 106. The basic
data collected by the cultural surveys (roughly equivalent to Athearn’s Level I) is
generally seen as adequate to record most sites and no further documentation is
needed.
This odd confluence of circumstance and timing brought a different
section of NHPA into play, Section 110(k)4. This section concerns the threat of
“anticipatory demolition,” the idea that a federal agency could take advantage of a
private action and do an end run around its Section 106 responsibilities. For
example, consider a highway project blocked by the presence of a significant
prehistoric site. Under Section 110(k) an unscrupulous federal agency is not
allowed to have someone else bulldoze the site beforehand to avoid Section 106
review and mitigation.
In this case, the landowner was acting independently of the UAMRP.
Although the landowner’s motivation was not to circumvent or preordain the
outcome of our Section 106 review, the net effect of the demolition would have
been to do just that. The landowner’s action would have rendered mitigation of
any potential effect by the UAMRP moot. It would be impossible for the
UAMRP to mitigate effects of its actions by recording site features if those
features no longer existed. Because of their respective timing, public and private
actions were now commingled as far as Section 106 is concerned.
4 Section 110(k) of the National Historic Preservation Act (16 U.S.C. 470h-2) reads as follows:
“(k) Each Federal agency shall ensure that the agency will not grant a loan, loan guarantee,
permit, license, or other assistance to an applicant who, with intent to avoid the requirements of
section 106, has intentionally significantly adversely affected a historic property to which the grant
would relate, or having the legal power to prevent it, allowed such significant adverse effect to
occur, unless the agency, after consultation with the Council, determines that circumstances justify
granting such assistance despite the adverse effect created or permitted by the applicant.”
In the face of a possible case of “anticipatory demolition” the AMRP
proposed “anticipatory mitigation” to the SHPO. The AMRP proposed to
mitigate the effects of both the public and private actions by fully documenting
the site before the demolition occurred. The UAMRP followed the
recommendations of the consultant who performed the initial cultural survey. The
package differed from HABS/HAER primarily in the format of the photographs
and drawings. Small format (35mm) negatives and scaled sketches were allowed.
HABS/HAER archival standards were maintained. Only those features directly
affected by the private and public actions would be recorded.
The mitigation package recorded ten structures or features (Boughton,
2003). The consultant recorded the site using a combination of sketches,
computer drafting, and 35mm black-and-white film. The entire recording
process, from start to final product, took four months (April-August) in 2003.
The cost for the work was $18,938.52. The recording did not cause a delay in the
project schedule. Reclamation construction followed in the spring of 2004.
This informal recording is done in-house using UAMRP staff with no
professional historical training. In Athearn’s terms, the level of recording is
somewhere between Level I and Level II. Research and historical context setting
are downplayed in favor of recording the features on the ground with drawings
and photographs. Usually only the specific at-risk structures or features are
recorded, rather than the entire site. The product is not fully archival. It is
submitted to the SHPO for local curation.
The UAMRP recorded both sites using a combination of sketches,
computer drafting, and black-and-white film and color digital photography
(Rohrer, 2005a). As it turned out, both mine closures were installed without
disturbing the headframes, so there was no immediate benefit. However, the
documentation is now part of the written record, and when the structures finally
succumb to wind or rot, the details of how they were built will still exist.
One National Register-eligible shaft had a very simple arrangement of
planks shoring up the collar. The planks extended above grade where they could
interfere with the installation of the proposed steel grate closure; they might need
to be removed to install the grate. At another eligible site, an errant welder’s
spark went undetected at the end of the shift and overnight ignited a fire that
consumed the shaft collar cribbing and also damaged an already fallen down
headframe that lay next to the shaft.
The UAMRP recorded both sites using a combination of sketches,
computer drafting, 35mm black-and-white film, and color digital photography
(Rohrer, 2005b). At the fire site, pre-fire inventory photographs were coupled
with additional photos and measurements to salvage as much information as
possible from the site to include in the package. At the other site, it was necessary
to remove the collar shoring to install the grate closure; the pre-closure
documentation served its purpose of preserving a record of how the shaft was
before the closure.
Boughton, John. 2003. The Jennie Mine (42In2026) in Iron County, Utah.
Report prepared for the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining by North
Wind Environmental, Inc. (July 2003)
Clements, M.A., D.C. Harris, and S.A. Baker. 2003. Archeological inventory of
abandoned mines in the Cherry Creek area, Juab County, Utah. Brigham
Young University Museum of Peoples and Cultures Technical Series No.
03-10 (September, 2003).
Chris Rohrer, September 2006, from WHEN THE BIG PICTURE IS TOO BIG: A SIMPLER
ALTERNATIVE TO HABS/HAER1 a Paper was presented at the 2006 National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Programs 28th
Annual Conference, September 25-27, 2006, Billings MT.
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