These are the mercury gas cooling tubes of the old Sunflower mine. The mine was in operation from 1913 to 1965. The mercury was extracted by crushing a type of rock called cinnabar, which was burned at high temperature in a furnace, then the vapor was cooled in these tanks and liquified into mercury.
This is a very remote area. I cannot imagine living or working out here, although Sunflower actually had a post office for a few years in the 1940's.
This week we are showing photos of Tanzania on our Viva la Voyage travel photo site.
4 comments:
This shows that mining is a lot more complex than simply digging rocks out of the earth.
the whole mining industry seems so archaic, pardon the pun...these have been very interesting and thought provoking photographs. Nice set.
Converting cinnabar to mercury? Yup, another job I don't want.
I can hardly imagine the kind of protection in those years with the handling of the mercury!
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