Sutro Tunnel
Born in Aachen, Rhine Province, Prussia (today North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), Sutro, educated as an engineer, at the age of twenty arrived in the United States and in 1850, he introduced himself to William Ralston of the Bank of California and introduced his plans for de-watering and de-gassing the mine shafts of the Comstock Lode by driving a tunnel through Mount Davidson to drain the water. Sutro incorporated the Sutro Tunnel company and raised US$3 million, a considerable fortune through this work in Nevada. He included the miners in his scheme, and planned to sail to Europe to negotiate with the Parisian Bank, but the Franco-Prussian War commenced in the middle of July 1870. Sutro was stymied, but out of the blue came an offer from a London bank led by a banker named McClamont, who offered $750,000 in gold per year for the Comstock.
According to Dickson, "... Sutro set off blasts of dynamite, ... leading the way for tunnel diggers. He fought avalanches, mud slides and poisonous gases. He dug air shafts to relieve the danger; the shafts filled with water, one of them to the depth of nine hundred feet. He fought cave-ins and solid rock. Through the grueling months, day after day and month after month, he marched ahead of his men, stripped to the waist, laboring with them, sweating with them, facing death with them, and in the end, winning through with them to victory."
Adolph Sutro became King of the Comstock because his tunnels drained three to 4 million US gallons (15,000 m3) of water a day, rented by mine owners at an average of $10,000 a day, "all moneys accumulated for his stockholders."
Sutro saw that better German pumps were becoming available, that the Comstock was going even deeper than his drainage tunnel and diminishing in metal output, and sold out before conditions worsened further, departing rich for San Francisco.
Read more about this topic: Adolph Sutro
Famous quotes containing the words sutro and/or tunnel:
“That’s the penalty we have to pay for our acts of foolishness—someone else always suffers for them.”
—Alfred Sutro (1863–1933)
“The drama critic on your paper said my chablis-tinted hair was like a soft halo over wide set, inviting eyes, and my mouth, my mouth was a lush tunnel through which golden notes came.”
—Samuel Fuller (b. 1911)