On a Whim

We actually have put more thought into this project than that. Back in early 2024 when we were planning to buy the mine we did as much research as we could to help us become more familiar with the history. Over the years visiting Tom and Lani we would look around but never go in depth with the history and the story they were interpreting. We found books and articles that Tom had in the back office and started to dig in. One of the books we found very helpful was by Clarence J. Monette. In it he described how mine captain Paull had a horse whim built the first year he arrived to improve the productivity of the mine. With that our journey begins.

When we looked at the property we noticed it was vastly underused. Tom had created a catchall area after the Hoist house that if cleaned up would allow us to build a replica whim for people to see. We started researching various whim's and how they were constructed and finally landed on a design we thought would fit the property and still be true to the period. Our first challenge was to find the right size Cedar logs. With all the trees up here you would think that would be easy but it took us two years with the help of Johnny Simula to find the right logs for the job. Once we had the logs we did a mock up to make sure the scale was representative of what would have been built and then construction began.

Manipulating 16' logs and getting things 12' - 14' in the air was another challenge and Johnny helped out again. With the heavy equipment and quick lessons on their operation along with our trust tractor we were able to begin. We finished clearing out the intended location and graded it to for the display. We had to properly orientate the whim so we can still access the rest of the property with big equipment if necessary but all that worked out. One afternoon we took the team to the the area and began. It went surprisingly smooth considering we did not have any concrete plans but only worked off a picture.

One outstanding question was how will people know what the horse did. Laurie had a few opinions on this as you might imagine. She was adamant that we would not have a real horse because she was not going to feed it and more importantly she was not going to clean up after it. I was slightly disappointed

but knew if she was not going to clean up after it then that would be my job and as you can guess I found a better solution. The answer was easy as we have watched many of the metal silhouette statues going up on the Quincy property. It was a perfect solution to our challenge. We reached out to Dave at Universal Metal and he can get us one cut out and ready for install by the Spring of 2027.

We are excited to see the project getting closer to completion and by Spring of 2027 just in time for our 50th anniversary the display will be finished. Next up is our rail display but we will talk about that when we get a little more done.