The adit, a horizontal entrance (located north of you), was extended into the sandstone cliff face with cut native sandstone blocks. The blocks were capped with large log beams spanned with small diameter ponderosa pine decking and then cover with rubble. The roof portal protected the coal miners from rocks falling from the sandstone outcrop above. The mine did not have a vertical shaft such as those often associated with hardrock mining, but instead inclined moderately down into the hillside following the flat sheet of the coal seam.
In 1900, the State Coal Mine Inspector reported that "the average number of employees was 65, the present number 62. The miners received 75 cents per ton for mining." By 1904, production from the Aladdin Mine had dipped to such a point that only 30 men were employed (Sheridan Post, December 13, 1904).
Though coal mining was neither as glamorous nor as high paying as hardcore mining, the dangers were as real and the adverse health effects of black lung seemed inevitable for long-term miners. As was the case with all coal mines, accidents occured (sic). Two "non-fatal casualties" were recorded at Aladdin in 1900. The first accident occured (sic) to Otto Carlson, a 44-year-old Swedish immigrant. His hand was smashed by falling rock in Aladdin No. 1. The other injury also took place in Aladdin
No. 1 when a prop fell, striking a 51-year-old Scottish miner and breaking his right ankle.
The coal mine at its opening in 1898 was "supplied with natural ventilation" from a vertical shaft (located northeast of your location) in the face of the hillside above and east of the adit entrance. The remains of the fan housing, installed during later operations, is visible and marks the location of the now plugged shaft. The fan extracted air from the mine creating a negative pressure that sucked fresh air into the adit entrance.
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