I went to Colorado recently and visited the Animas Forks region to see some ghost towns. Thoughts of how these communities were built and lived in inspired me to consider more deeply if it would be possible to learn how the buildings were actually built.
It's something that I do already, looking at buildings and trying to guess their age based on construction techniques. This is usually buildings or factories in cities, and since they are usually large with complex construction, there are a lot of clues. Large buildings had more of a chance of following standardized building procedures, sometimes building codes.
Buildings and houses in the mountains would be another thing entirely. Throughout most of the mining era, these communities were thrown together in some very harsh environments, far away from normal supply lines, and probably without any kind of code or building inspector. I noticed that some houses and buildings were sound, but others were not so sound. These communities were filled with buildings that are no longer standing. In one place, Capital City just west of Lake City, only one building survives. It was easy for me to visualize that as the mine played out and people started leaving the area, the last ones to stay were probably tearing the other houses down to use as firewood.
One thing I know about building in places other than the mountain is that you normally position the building on a foundation that goes below the freeze line so that it will not be subject to freeze thaw cycles and the instability and thrusting that comes with freezing soil.
The houses in Animas Forks were all built on grade without any basement. The ground they were built on was mostly rocky, either large rocks or solid shelves. This would have been an extreme challenge to anchor a building to. The other thing that I kept thinking about was how deep the snow would get in the winter. One storyboard mentioned that many of the homes were destroyed by avalanches, so how do you protect against that?
The whole line of thought made me think that it would be a great book idea - mining town building construction. You could have a fantastic time searching out the structures: locate them, analyze them, and map them. While it would be fantastic to have access to building records and find actual Bills of Materials, I believe that research would indicate that there are no records left of how things were constructed. It would have to be done by first hand inspection.
I was daydreaming while I was in Animas Forks about what I would do if I could go back in time. I figured their life in a mining camp was pretty harsh, so it would be good to make a bath house and water works. You could probably use solar energy to heat the water. It would not be hard to improve on the available construction materials. So much could be done with just the mining tailings to make sturdy foundations. I looked at the insides of the remaining houses in Animas Forks and saw what I thought at first was wallpaper, but later determined was material covering the walls to keep the cold out. It would not be that hard to construct avalanche splitters uphill from a house, and it would be very useful to use the stone to put the house into the side of a hill so that you would have some protection and heat from the ground. You'd have to lay in an enormous amount of food to stay there year-round. I imagine there comes a time in November or December where the roads close and do not re-open until spring.
I don't think I'm built of the sterner stuff it would take to stay over the winter up in the mountains. I do like the idea of poking around in those old mountain towns throughout a pleasant summer. Now all I need is an advance by a publisher and a winning lottery ticket and I'm there.
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