It was a pretty light day today and a pretty short drive. We visited the Platteville Lead Mine Museum. When we arrived, we were informed that the museum was closed because the power was out. Platteville had a tornado last night and the power company turned off the power in town while they worked out the issues with the power lines. We spent some time chatting with the woman who had greeted us (I think she was the museum history director) and she asked us to wait while she checked something. When she came back, she said she thought they had enough power for one tour on emergency lighting. So, we got to have out tour.
The tour was interesting. We visit mines and caves pretty regularly on trips but have not been to a lead mine before. The tour guide was laid back and the minimal power + flashlight tour enhanced the tour. The conditions that the lead miners worked in was fairly insane. Apparently lead miners were normally part owners in the mining operation and therefore received a portion of the profit. As the tour guide told it, they were highly motivated to work quickly (and not necessarily safely) to maximize their profits. In lead mining, they remove only the lead from the mine. They get it to the ground in a little hand-cranked basket. So, they don't remove the waste rock from the mine. As a result, the mine fills up with waste rock and there are narrow passages for the miners to move in (they removed the waste rock for the tour, of course). Other crazy things: the only head protection they wore was a felt hat (to which they attached a candle for light) and when working as a team, one man holding a long chisel-type tool and one man hammering with an enormous sledge hammer, when the man holding the chisel wanted to stop, he would place his thumb over then end of the chisel to stop the man from hammering. This seems like a highly questionable practice to me.
After the lead min tour, we drove to Dubuque. In Dubuque, we had lunch and then wen to the Fenelon Street Elevator. The Fenelon Street Elevator is a rail car that a man built to provide a shortcut to his house from town. The man lived up a steep incline so he couldn't climb the hill (by the fact that he could afford to build thins thing, I imagine scrambling up a steep hill for lunch was beneath his dignity. In any case, the primary benefit of the elevator now (for tourists anyway) is that there is a nice overlook of the town and river valley from the top of the tram ride.
While we were taking photographs, admiring, etc, the woman who was operating the tram asked what our plans in town were. We mentioned we were thinking of going to the aquarium next. She said the aquarium was large and that we would probably want more than a couple hours to look at it. Since the aquarium was one of the key attractions on the trip (according to me), we decided to stay over in Dubuque and visit tomorrow.
Next we visited the shot tower. The shot tower was free and came only with an interpretive sign. They used the shot tower to make shot for guns. At the top of the tower the poured in molten lead. The lead flowed through a kind of sieve to make the right size drips. The drips fell through the tower where the formed into round balls. At the bottom of the tower was a pool of water to cool the small balls to a manageable temperature. This seems like a pretty ingenious process but it seems like it would be a fairly low-volume process: raising lead (somehow) to the top of the tower, melting it, sieving it, retrieving it from the water, etc. I would be curious to see the thing (or a similar thing since this one burnt down [interior burnt] while it was being used as a [wait for it. . .] fire lookout tower) in operation.
We then visited Galena. Ulysses S. Grant's home is closed on Tuesdays so we didn't get a chance to visit it. Downtown Galena is pretty, though, and different than most of our Minnesota towns look (now, anyway). All of the building are made of brick and stretch along main street; I can't think of any Minnesota towns that look quite like Galena.
Following Galena, we called it quits for the night. Tomorrow the National Mississippi Museum and Aquarium.
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