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Events/Disaster · 1901

Broken Hill South Mine rock fall

Disaster, 1901-05-24, Australia.

What happened

A rock fall at the Broken Hill South Mine on 24 May 1901 killed six mine workers. The mine produced lead and silver by stoping.1,2

Why it matters

The regulator uses it as a case study of ground failure at Broken Hill.1,2

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. General Mining Law of 1872

    The law remains the basis for claims to locatable minerals on US federal land.3,4

  2. Schieffelin finds silver at Tombstone

    The NPS file says Tombstone became the largest town in Arizona Territory.5,6

  3. Leadville silver boom

    Leadville shows how fast a silver camp could outgrow a state capital.7,8

  4. Charles Rasp finds the Broken Hill orebody

    The orebody supported the world's largest silver-lead-zinc mining district and led to BHP.2,9

  5. Antofagasta railway reaches Oruro

    The line to the Pacific cut costs of sending Bolivian ore to Europe.10,11,12

  6. South Broken Hill silver mine airblast

    The regulator uses it as a case study of ground failure at Broken Hill.2,13

  7. Broken Hill South Mine rock fall

    The regulator uses it as a case study of ground failure at Broken Hill.1,2

  8. Broken Hill Central Mine falls of earth

    The regulator ties the deaths to creep caused by shrinkage of mullock fill.2,14

Open the full timeline

Where next

Mines

Located inBroken HillThe regulator uses this Broken Hill rock fall as a case study of ground failure.1

Events

An example ofSouth Broken Hill silver mine airblastSix years later a rock fall at the same mine killed six on 24 May 1901.13ExamplesBroken Hill Central Mine falls of earthAnother ground failure: falls at Broken Hill Central killed two in 1902.1

Places

Located inBroken HillSee the place where this happened: Broken Hill.1

Sources

  1. 1901 Broken Hill South Mine case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  2. Broken Hill (item Q270734), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  3. Mining Claims and Sites on Federal Lands (PDF) US Bureau of Land Management
  4. Washington, D.C. (item Q61), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  5. Tombstone Historic District, National Historic Landmark nomination US National Park Service
  6. Tombstone (item Q79873), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  7. Leadville Colorado Encyclopedia
  8. Leadville (item Q286702), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  9. History of Broken Hill Broken Hill City Council
  10. Correa Vera L., Del poder a los tratados: desarrollo y ferrocarriles en Bolivia, 1870-1904 Historia 46(2) (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, via Redalyc)
  11. Hillman J., The Emergence of the Tin Industry in Bolivia Journal of Latin American Studies 16(2) (Cambridge University Press)
  12. Wikidata item Q35246 (Oruro)
  13. 1895 South Broken Hill Silver Mine case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  14. 1902 Broken Hill Central Mine case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Froth flotation and tailings by Nina111955, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0).