Gumoshevsky mine

The mine was developed at a copper deposit located in the upper reaches of the Chusovaya River , between the Polevaya River and the Zhelezinka River, 4 versts from the Polevskoy Zavod , 52 versts south-west of the city of Yekaterinburg . The field is located on Mount Mednoy, surrounded by swamps ^[2] .

Ancient History

The history of the mine began in the Bronze Age and continued during the early Iron Age . From the middle of the II millennium BC. e. a powerful zone of oxidation of copper ores was developed here (up to 30-35 meters). Work continued intermittently for many centuries. In the mines, traces of ancient works and the remains of the tools of ancient miners who inhabited miracles in the past (“Chudsky mines”) were found many times ^[2] .

Ore nests were located between dense white coarse-grained limestone or between clay slate and had a thickness of 12.8-17.1 meters and 8.5-10.7 meters. The ore was mined from talc clay, penetrated by copper greens and blue, and contained 4-5% copper, and in the XIX century ore was mined with a content of 2-3% copper. The ore included particles of malachite , native copper , brown iron ^[2] , pyrite , red copper ore , brocantite and quartz ^[3] .

Discovery of the Field in the 18th Century

In 1702, the Gumoshevskoye field was rediscovered by the peasants of the Aramil settlement Sergey Babin and Kozma Suleev ^[4] . As N.K. Chupin wrote on the basis of archival sources, the ore was not developed ^[4] . At the same time, EH Chernykh and B. B. Menshikov in the “ Mountain Encyclopedia ” indicate ^[5] that “in 1709 industrial development of ore began, which was sent to the Uktus plant , and then to the Yekaterinburg plant , and in 1718 to Polevsky smelter "; but this cannot be true, for the Yekaterinburg and Polevskoy factories only started operating in 1723 and 1724, respectively.

In 1713 and 1716 the field was explored. In October 1713, the commandant of the Uktus Treasury Plant, commandant Semyon Durnov, by order of the Siberian governor Prince Gagarin, sent the smelter Avramov and two ore miners of the Uktus plant to inspect copper deposits. The Gumeshevskoye field was considered unpromising, and suitable on the Polevaya River on the mountain and on the Shilovka River. However, at the beginning of 1716, Sergey Babin repeatedly demonstrated the sample and ore from the Gumeshevsky mine to Prince Gagarin, and in April 1716, the oremaker Ognev, with S. Babin and with the workers of the Uktus plant, with 10 armed dragoons, sent to the site, explored the copper deposit . In August 1717, Ivan Bukhvalov with a truck, workers of the Uktus plant and 70 dragoons examined the field, and repeatedly came to the conclusion that this field was unpromising ^[4] .

Development

In May 1719, the development of the Polevsky copper mine was started, and a number of mining structures were built. But they were burned by nomad Bashkirs, who considered these lands their own, and forbade further construction here ^[4] . In December 1720, a message from Peter the Great was sent to the Bashkirs from the Senate, ordering to equip the area and punish the Bashkirs for reconciliation. In the decree of Peter the Great, the mine was called a “plant”, which is connected with the mixing of these terms in antiquity ^[4] , and perhaps this has affected the discrepancies in the dates of the founding of the plant and mine in modern sources. The site for the construction of the new plant was personally chosen by V. N. Tatishchev , and G. V. de Gennin reported to the emperor that “a dam and ore-smelting, and burning, and other factories” were built on the Polevaya river. In July 1723, active development of the Popovskoye and partly Gumeshevsky deposits began, the copper ore of the Gumeshevsky mine was imported to Uktusky and the Yekaterinburg plants built in the same year ^[4] .

In 1724, the Polevskoy copper smelter was founded to process ore from rich copper deposits located in the district. The main supplier of copper raw materials was the Gumoshevsky mine ^{[2] [6] [7]} .

The mine and the plant gave birth to the village, the future city of Polevsky ^[8] .

In 1758 , with the discovery of powerful deposits of oxidized copper, the Gumoshevskoye deposit became the largest copper ore deposit at that time in the Middle Urals. At the end of the 18th century, about 500 workers worked at the mine ^[2] .

In 1770, P. S. Pallas , professor at the Imperial Academy of Sciences, visited Gumyoshki, who left a detailed description of the mine, two types of malachite , and also reported that 200 people were engaged in mining operations, 150 people were supporting work, as well as more than 100 assigned peasants in the winter ^[9] .

In 1871, the mine began to flood with strong streams of groundwater, ore mining was completely stopped in 1872, and by 1876 the mine was completely flooded. In 1872-1907, the ore was sorted and washed from old dumps (until 1917). About 200 people were employed in these works.

Gumeshevsky copper-extracting plant

At the beginning of the 20th century, a hydrometallurgical plant was constructed at the mine to extract copper from oxidized ores. The Gumeshevsky copper recovery plant processed the dump ore with sulfuric acid leaching, followed by the extraction of copper from the solution by cementation. The plant operated in 1908-1919. In 1919, the plant burned down and was no longer being restored.

Polevskoy sulfuric acid plant

In 1907, the Polevskoy sulfuric acid plant was built to develop the Zyuzelsky sulfur-pyrite-cobalt deposit (later the Polevskoy cryolite plant appeared on this site). Production waste was stored in spent quarries and mines "Georgievskaya" and "English".

1920s - 1960s

In 1926-1930, the Gumoshevsky mine was in a concession for the British company Lena Goldfields, which resumed production at the Zyuzelsky mine (2.1 million pounds of copper pyrites were mined in 1927-1928).

In 1934, the Degtyarsk Geological Exploration Bureau Tsvetmetrazvedka began exploration of indigenous sulfide ores. At the beginning of 1938, exploratory drilling began in the area of ​​old mines, where a skarn ore deposit up to 20 meters thick was discovered with a good copper content. In 1939, mining began at the Yuzhnaya mine.

During the Great Patriotic War in early 1942, the mine was mothballed ^[5] .

In 1950, under the project of the Unipromed Institute , work began on the restoration of the mine with a design capacity of 300 thousand tons of ore per year. The construction of the Kapitalnaya mine began, and the Gumeshevskoye mine administration was formed. On December 3, 1959, after reconstruction, the first phase of the mine was put into operation ^[5] .

In 1961, the shield ore mining system was first used, and in 1963 flexible artificial floors were launched. In 1965, the CPV complex was used in the excavation of vertical workings, and when attaching the workings, wedge and reinforced concrete rods and spray concrete were used.

Tar mining department

Since April 1970, the Gumeshevsky mine entered the Degtyarsky mine administration. In 1994, the mine was again closed and drainage was stopped. By 2001, the mine was completely flooded.

RMK

In the early 2000s, a pilot industrial extraction of copper and gold by underground leaching was started at the Gumoshevsky deposit.

According to some researchers, reserves of malachite could be preserved at the Gumoshevsky mine ^[10] .

Under the leadership of the hydrotechnical inventor Kozma Frolov , a hydropower plant with a length of more than a kilometer was built at the mine in the 1750s, from the dam of the Shtangovsky pond to the mine. With the help of this installation, the energy of the water-rotating wheel was transmitted, using rods, to the drainage pumps and drums of the lifting installations of the mines. And by 1850, drainage from the mines was also carried out by a rod machine, which transmits the energy of the rotating water wheel through the rods for 1 kilometer to the shaft, where it was converted from horizontal to vertical by rotary mechanism - a coper-benbrot and fed to the drainage pumps and lifting drums of the mines.

The English mechanic Joseph Gill in 1793, together with Pavel Frolov (the son of K. Frolov), built the first steam engine in the Urals to raise water from the mine in the Gumoshevsky mine.

In 1898, the first hydroelectric power station was built on the dam of the Rod Pond, which supplied electricity to the Polevskoy Plant .

According to I.P. Falk from 1772, the mine shaft was 38.4 meters deep, and the adits were 853.4 meters long, there were two "mining" mines with a copper content of 4-5%. According to berg inspector I.E. Tomilov from 1808, three mines were active in the mine: Danilovskaya, Ivanovskaya with a depth of 51.2 meters, located in clay, and Fedorovskaya with a depth of 59.7 meters, located in clay and sand formations. In 1835, according to the data of H.H. Thompson, the mine reached a depth of 81.1 meters, adit length - 1280.2 meters, and width - 128-170.7 meters. The copper content decreased to 2-3%. At the end of the 1850s, 6 mines operated at the mine: Anninsky, Pokrovskaya, Evdokievskaya, Vasilyevskaya, Nikolaev, Prokopyevskaya. The depths of the mines of Anninsky and Pokrovskaya reached 104.5-110.9 meters. By the end of the 1860s, the depth of the mine reached a mark of 170.7 meters, the influx of water into the mines increased, which became increasingly difficult to cope with ^[2] .

At the end of the 18th century , 450–480 tons of copper were smelted from the ore of the mine. At the end of the XVIII century, ore mining reached 1 million pounds per year, and copper smelting at the Polevsky plant up to 30 thousand pounds per year.

Samples of ores and minerals of the Gumoshevsky deposit are included in the mineralogical collections of the largest museums in the world. A pound of Gusmechev malachite was sold at a price of 300-500 rubles, and at the beginning of the 19th century, from 1,000 to 4,000 rubles ^[2] .

In the second half of the 18th century, the Gumoshevsky mine gained worldwide fame as the main supplier of amazingly beautiful and decorative green ornamental stone - malachite . Gumoshevsky malachite was the highest quality and was used to make wonderful jewelry. This malachite decorated the halls of the Winter and Versailles palaces , St. Isaac's Cathedral . In 1775, a malachite block weighing 2.72 tons was mined at the mine. And a part of it of 1504 kilograms was donated in 1789 to Catherine II , who transferred it to the Mineralogical Museum of the St. Petersburg Mining Institute ^[3] , where she is stored to the present.

Malachite production in 1814 amounted to 504 pounds, in 1826 - 624.5 pounds, in 1834-1854 only 400 pounds ^[2] .

The extraction of copper ore in 1860 was 1.4 million pounds, in 1861 - 1.5 million pounds ^[2] .

Since its foundation in 1709-1757, the mine has been in the treasury. In 1757, the mine was transferred to the merchant A.F. Turchaninov ^[2] . In 1832-1870, it was owned by P. D. Solomirsky (grandson of A.F. Turchaninov), in 1870-1912 it was owned by Dmitry Pavlovich Solomirsky (son of P.D. Solomirsky). In 1912-1917, owned by Sysert Company Limited joint-stock company. In 1925-1930, the mine was in a concession for the English company Lena Goldfields Limited.

Gumoshevsky mine appears in the collection of Ural tales " Malachite Box " by P. P. Bazhov . The Mistress of the Copper Mountain lives in it ^[11] .

In the 1930s, P. P. Bazhov described his first impressions of “Copper Mountain” when he moved to Polevskoy in the 1890s:

Father sparingly explained: - Yes, this is a mine. Malachite used to be mined there. They only worked not overburden, like on Grigoryevsky or on Kamennaya Gorka, but in mines, like on Skvarts. Did you see? Now these mines are flooded. There is a mine in the cast, and they say that there is still much malachite left. [...]

Still, the Copper Mountain deceived me most of all. When approaching the Polevsky plant, the first thing I looked for was the Copper Mountain, which I so clearly represented. Around the plant there were many mountains typical for the Urals, covered with coniferous forests, but there was no Copper Mountain. [...]

When, after a few days, he saw Gumeshki close, he almost burst into tears of resentment. There was no mountain at all. It was a field of the dullest kind. On it, even grass grew only with rare bushes. On the field are some half-crumbling fences of poles and the remains of traction drums over collapsed mines. Returning from Gumeshek, with excitement he began to “convict” his father of fraud, but the father calmly repeated his previous explanation:

- I said that this is a mine. Copper ore was mined. So the mountain is. Always take ore from the mountains. Only another mountain comes out, and another in the earth.

- Bazhov P.P. At the old mine: part II // Ural tales ^[12]

• Gumeshevsky mine // Mountain Encyclopedia : [in 5 volumes]. - M .: " Soviet Encyclopedia ", 1984-1991. - ISBN 5-85270-007-X .
• Gumeshevsky mine // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1893. - T. IXa.
• Bazhov P.P. Ural Tales : in 3 vols. / Under the Society. ed. V.A. Bazhovoi, A.A. Surkov , E.A. Permyak . - M .: State Publishing House of Fiction , 1952. - T. 2.
• Gumeshevsky copper mine / D.V. Gavrilov, V.V. Zapariy // Metallurgical plants of the Urals XVII-XX centuries. Encyclopedia / chapters. ed. V.V. Alekseev . - Yekaterinburg: Akademkniga Publishing House, 2001. - S. 177-179. - ISBN 5-93472-057-0 .
• Polevskoy smelter, iron smelter, ironworks / N. S. Korepanov, V.P. Mikityuk // Metallurgical plants of the Urals XVII-XX centuries. Encyclopedia / chapters. ed. V.V. Alekseev . - Yekaterinburg: Akademkniga Publishing House, 2001. - S. 387-390. - ISBN 5-93472-057-0 .
• Gumeshevsky mine // Leading industrial enterprises of Polevsky: reference bibliographic guide / MUK "Centralized Library System", Center. mountains bk; comp. S. M. Genkina, R. S. Diyarova. - Polevskoy, 2007 .-- 54 p. - includes add. bibliography on the topic.

• Gumeshevsky mine (neopr.) . stalker project "Urbantrip".
• Gumeshevsky mine map on Wikimapia .