Humberstone Mine: The Mining Process

Perhaps the high point of the Humberstone Mine was in 1918. In this year it was reported in the Edmonton Journal that the mine was the best equipped in the Clover Bar field, with a capacity of 1,000 tons per day.

Operations at the Humberstone Mine in 1918

The mine originally used the room and pillar mining method, where miners would dig out coal using a pick and shovel, leaving “pillars” of coal in the centre of rooms to help hold up the ceiling. The tunnels were also shored up by timber men, using seven foot lengths of spruce, poplar and tamarack. The logs were cut by a crew near Entwistle and delivered to the mine.

A mine worker next to a pile of coal and wooden pillars.

Pillar Work, ca. 1917
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The most common mining job was that of “hand pick” miners. Hand-pick miners were considered the most skilled. Using a pick and shovel, they worked in rooms as large as fifteen feet wide, though the spaces could be much smaller. In the winter of 1918 there were ninety hand pick miners. They could mine between twelve and twenty car loads in an eight hour shift.

Pick Mining, ca. 1917
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In 1918 there were also six machine “punch” miners, which were used in narrow spaces. One of these machines, operated by two men, could pull out between twenty and thirty car loads in a shift. The machines dug out a section of coal from below, then the whole mass would be knocked down and pulled out.