Mining
The lignite mining industry began around 1560, after gloss coal bits were discovered in a brook, and persisted until 1929. The coal was used,for example, as fuel for salt production in Bad Sooden Allendorf and at the large power station in Kassel.
- Stinksteinwand and Schwalbenthal: Striking evidence of the centuries-long practice of mining on the Meissner is given by the so-called Stinksteinwand ("stinking stone wall"), located above Schwalbenthal on the east face of the mountain. In former times coal was extracted there, by sub-surface mining. This coal was prone to spontaneous combustion, and for centuries people on the surface have seen and smelled the smoke from the smoldering fires in the subterranean coal seams. Even in recent times all attempts to extinguish these fires have failed, so that one can often notice a sulfur-like smell -- sometimes quite strong -- at the Schwalbenthal parking lot or beyond. Slightly below the Stinksteinwand lies the Gasthaus Schwalbenthal inn, the last remaining building in a mining industry settlement of about 10 houses, demolished because of the danger of landslides.
- Bransrode: Bransrode, on the northwest side of the mountain massif, is the site of the last sub-surface coal mine in the area, which was closed in 1929. Immediately thereafter, the quarrying of basalt began, which continued until 2003.
- Calf (ex open mining): From 1949 to 1974 by means of days at the calves brown coal one promoted, which is still to be recognized still well: After the pumps were turned off, up to 30 m deep a lake northeast formed and above this for approximately 20,000 m² large lake is the basalt crest calf in the former open mining, whose quite evenly graduated and quite high basalt walls are impressing much. In order to put the coal seams freely, the basalt masses storing over it had to be diminished and way-created: These were then poured simply over the mountain-slopes, which is to be recognized also today still by the waste dumps resulted from it well: Meter high pile up themselves at the slopes above the woman Holle pond partly large basalt breaking into up.
Read more about this topic: Hoher Meissner
Famous quotes containing the word mining:
“It’s a mining town in lotus land.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)