Trails End Publishing
Dish Hill Volcano and the Dish Hill Cinder Mine.
By Joe de Kehoe
Copyright © Joe de Kehoe, 2009
Click on photos to enlarge.
Dish Hill Mine in the early 1950's. Photo courtesy of Bill Bergee.
Sec. 16 T. 6 N. R. 10 E. SBBM
Lat. 34 36' 47" N. Long.115 56' 42" W.
Sec. 16 T. 6 N. R. 10 E. SBBM
Lat. 34 36' 47" N. Long.115 56' 42" W.
Dish Hill is a prominent reddish colored horseshoe-shaped volcanic cinder cone about sixteen miles east of Ludlow and about one quarter mile north of old Route 66. The location is interesting to mineral collectors because of the occurrence of olivine - glassy green crystals that are encased in pieces of dark gray basalt.
The olivine represents isolated and stranded pieces of the earth’s mantle that have been plucked off the walls of the volcano’s vent deep in the earth (as deep as 50 – 60 km) and brought to the surface in the basaltic lava as the volcano erupted.
Unlike Amboy crater that produced large lava flows during eruptions, Dish Hill and its small sister vent to the south, were mainly gas vents that spewed out volcanic ash and cinders, but minimal amounts of lava.
Lat. 34 36' 47" N. Long.115 56' 42" W.
Sec. 16 T. 6 N. R. 10 E. SBBM
Lat. 34 36' 47" N. Long.115 56' 42" W.
Dish Hill is a prominent reddish colored horseshoe-shaped volcanic cinder cone about sixteen miles east of Ludlow and about one quarter mile north of old Route 66. The location is interesting to mineral collectors because of the occurrence of olivine - glassy green crystals that are encased in pieces of dark gray basalt.
The olivine represents isolated and stranded pieces of the earth’s mantle that have been plucked off the walls of the volcano’s vent deep in the earth (as deep as 50 – 60 km) and brought to the surface in the basaltic lava as the volcano erupted.
Unlike Amboy crater that produced large lava flows during eruptions, Dish Hill and its small sister vent to the south, were mainly gas vents that spewed out volcanic ash and cinders, but minimal amounts of lava.
Dish Hill Cinder Mine
Remains of what once was the ore chute at the Dish Hill Cinder Mine. The Dish Hill volcano is the reddish colored hill in the back ground. View to the north. Photo by Joe de Kehoe.
The mining operation at Dish Hill was only in existence for about 6 months and never sold a single bag of product. In 1953 the Velvatone Stucco Products Company in Los Angeles leased 160 acres on the south side of the Dish Hill volcano and was the idea of two brothers from Los Angeles who intended to sell crushed volcanic cinders for use as aggregate in plaster and stucco and for use on snow-covered roads in place of salt. The mine, a surface mining operation, consisted of a bunkhouse, a house, an underground dynamite storage room, and a wooden loading ramp with a rock crusher and a wooden ore chute supported by large timbers. Cinders were scraped off the side of the volcano and dumped into the ore chute where they slid down to a wooden platform to be crushed, bagged and loaded into trucks. Today all that remains is the partially buried dynamite storage room and some fallen timbers on the side of the volcano that were once part of the loading chute.
The mine was built by Edward M. Bergee, a mechanic who formerly ran the garage at Bagdad. Ed did all of the wood construction and ran the bulldozer as an employee - he was not one of the partners in the mine. Ed lived at the mine with his 10 year old son, Bill, his wife Mae, and Mae’s three children, Carolyn, Herbie and Kenny. When they first moved to the mine in the early 1950s the family lived in a 1-room bunk house, but Ed eventually began work on a wood-framed 3-bedroom house to serve as the family’s residence. The house was never completely finished however, because in less than 6 months the mine owners ran out of money and the whole venture was abandoned.
Today, the debris of timbers in the dry wash on the side of the mountain at the mine are what remains of the ore chute and the supports that brought the crushed rock down to a platform where it was crushed and bagged for shipment.
Almost nothing remains of the house or bunkhouse that was about 100 yards west of the mine, immediately east of the dirt road coming up from the railroad.
The two brothers who started the mine got permission from the railroad to deepen the dry wash under the railroad bridge so their trucks could get in and out, but they failed to convince the railroad to build a spur line to the mine so that their crushed rock could be loaded directly into rail cars. The mine never made any money and it was abandoned before it ever really got off the ground. Ed Bergee and his son Bill moved near Amboy where Ed went to work as a mechanic for National Chloride and Mae and her children moved elsewhere.
As far as I know the mine never had a name - I simply refer to it as the Dish Hill Cinder Mine. I visited the site of the former mine with Bill Bergee in September 2009. Bill, now a grandfather, lives with his family in Highland, California.
Almost nothing remains of the house or bunkhouse that was about 100 yards west of the mine, immediately east of the dirt road coming up from the railroad.
The two brothers who started the mine got permission from the railroad to deepen the dry wash under the railroad bridge so their trucks could get in and out, but they failed to convince the railroad to build a spur line to the mine so that their crushed rock could be loaded directly into rail cars. The mine never made any money and it was abandoned before it ever really got off the ground. Ed Bergee and his son Bill moved near Amboy where Ed went to work as a mechanic for National Chloride and Mae and her children moved elsewhere.
As far as I know the mine never had a name - I simply refer to it as the Dish Hill Cinder Mine. I visited the site of the former mine with Bill Bergee in September 2009. Bill, now a grandfather, lives with his family in Highland, California.
House at the Dish Hill Mine built by Ed Bergee for his family – wife, son and 3 step children - in the early 1950s. The house was never completely finished - the mine was abandoned and the family moved away. Bunkhouse is behind the house to the left. Photo courtesy of Bill Bergee
May 1963 photo of the bunk house at the Dish Hill Mine that was built in the early 1950s by Edward Bergee. Although the bunkhouse was still there in 1963, there are only a few scrap pieces of board left there today. Photo courtesy of Bill Bergee.
Bill Bergee, age 10 in Bagdad about 1948 before moving to the Dish Hill Mine with his dad.
