The fabled Comstock Lode contained the biggest silver deposit in American history. Discovered in 1857, Comstock drew thousands of miners willing to tackle the dangerous work of mining the silver buried deep within the earth. The population of Virginia City, Nevada, situated on top of the rich Comstock mother lode, grew from 4,000 to 25,000 in just 12 years.
Extracting the silver at Comstock was extremely dangerous. Constant risks of cave-ins, underground fires and flooding in the mines killed many miners. These dangers challenged the brightest minds of the West and led to many and varied technological innovations in the mining process.
The ore deposits of the Comstock were buried deep in Mount Davidson. The mines of the Comstock lode were deeper than any mines in history, 2,100 feet under the surface. The soils of the arid region required constant shoring up with wood. Philipp Deidsheimer, a German engineer, solved the problem in 1860 by inventing square-set timbering. This brilliant innovation allowed the Comstock lode mines to burrow deep within the earth, revolutionizing the mining industry.
Another major risk factor of mining Comstock involved flooding. Water below 700 feet could rise to 108 degrees; when miners cut through rock, steam and scalding water flooded into the tunnels, putting the miners in deadly peril. A Prussian named Adolph Sutro came up with the solution: tunnels were dug from a valley through solid rock to the mines of Comstock. Drain flumes in the floor of the tunnel allowed water in the mines to seep away to the valley floor. The Sutro Tunnel provided both drainage and ventilation, thus drastically decreasing mining operation costs.
http://onlinenevada.org/comstock_lode
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=179
