The question really arises is this thing actually a mine?
The history of the area suggests that it may be something else; a tunnel excavated
for the purpose of aging
cheddar cheese.
During the early 19th century the cheddar cheese production in the United
States was in Goshen, Connecticut
and spread out over several other towns in Western Connecticut .
The most popular cheese that was produced was made in the shape of a pineapple that at the time
was called pineapple cheese. This cheese whether it was made to look like a
pineapple or simply cheddar cheese wheels. This cheese was so popular that it
enjoyed a worldwide distribution being exported to the Caribbean ,
Europe and the Far East notably China .
The shaft
and tunnel were recently rediscovered revealing a mine shaft that was about
40 feet deep with a tunnel going off from the bottom of the shaft that was 6
feet wide, 7 feet high and 10 feet deep. At the time of its discovery we all
thought it was probably an abandoned mine but subsequent work that was
performed on the mine with an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF) reveals no
apparent minerals associated with gold or gold in this shaft and tunnel. So
this left the question of what were they mining?
John Carter brought up the possibility that this was
actually used for aging
cheese. This hypothesis brought up one major objection from the landowner,
and so far the other investigators are not aware of this possibility that what
we thought was a mine was actually an underground tunnel used for aging cheddar
cheese.
The major objection was the simple fact that this alleged
mine was making quite a bit of water into the tunnel as well as part of the
shaft. At first this seemed like a valid objection but further research reveals
that they had hoses
capable of carrying water clear back to 400 BC. Depending on the age of this
feature it could have used hose made from leather that was secured by copper
rivets, or a type of hose made from knitted linen fibers that were invented in
the early 1800s. Either of these hoses was capable of being used as a siphon that would've kept the
water in the tunnel under control.
In the early 1800s cheddar cheese was covered by a thin
layer of cotton cloth then covered with lard causing the cheese to become
waterproof. At the same time this covering of cotton cloth and lard allowed the
gases that were being generated as the cheese aged to escape through the
covering that kept the water from coming back into the cheese as it aged. However
the cheese still had to be aged in a cool dry place which this was far from; it
made water that was capable of filling the shaft about three quarters full.
Without continually pumping the shaft and tunnel this complex was useless.
There was another kind of pump that have been used since
ancient times called the Archimedes screw it
used a helical screw turning inside a tight fitting to that was capable of
raising water up to 10 m or close to 40 feet the depth of the shaft. It is
possible they used a device like this for keeping the water out of the tunnel
and shaft.
Had the complex been able to be used for aging cheese there
would have been a series of shelves for storing the cheese, but once again
these were missing so it has to be assumed that the whole complex was abandoned
once the diggers were convinced it was useless for aging cheese. The fact that further work was intended is
attested to by a series of drill holes inside the tunnel. Ultimately the vast amount of water entering
the complex caused its abandonment. This
waterflow has been estimated to exceed twenty gallons per minute. It would have been a pretty good well, but no
place to store cheese.
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