We parked the car at the trailhead and headed up the trail. We had hiked for about an hour when we stumbled upon some derelict mining equipment just sitting there rusting away. We decided this would be a good place to take a break. We took our packs off and wandered around looking at all this rusting stuff. Most of it was cast iron and I shuddered at the thought of the effort taken to get it there from some place back East. Miners had worked this area a hundred and forty years ago and had to transport all their gear by whatever means was available. A few minutes later, we heard a stern voice, "Hey, what are you guys doing?" We turned to meet Glen Parker, who was there working his claim - Value Mines, Inc. He was a 1/3 partner and the only one who cared about mining. He was there with his wife. He offered to show us his mine. It was pretty fascinating. He said he spent the morning loading rail carts with rubble from the previous evening's blast. He pushed the carts out of the mine and over to a crusher that would crush the rock into large gravel pieces. This gravel was then transported to a shaker table. The shaker table was about 10' square with ribs attached laterally. At the end of the table was one end of a connecting rod. The other end was attached to a wheel about a foot in diameter that was turned by a DC motor. Picture a single-cylinder engine with the piston attached to the table. Glen would get a load of gravel on the table and start it up. The table would move back and forth and with the help of water, the ore would end up in rows according to its weight. He would come along and scoop up the top row of gold, then the silver, then the whatever comes next. He spent the rest of the day drilling holes for sticks of dynamite, inserting the sticks and exiting. With a twist of his wrist, he'd declare it Miller time.

The point of this story is that the lights in the mine and in his cabin and the power needed to run the crusher and shaker table came from the Pelton wheel.

This Pelton wheel was made of cast iron in 1898. It was about 3' in diameter and had a circular array of cups about the size of your hand. Above it was a 6" diameter vertical pipe with a nozzle at the bottom. Glen said the pipe was 150' high and was fed by a creek. He grumbled that he had to go up and unclog it every once in a while. It worked though. It gave him all the power he needed. This is a great example of distributed generation. Amory would be impressed.