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Wildwood Missouri

Wildwood, Missouri

This is a lime kiln. It is in Rockwoods Reservation, a Missouri forest and wildlife conservation area in Wildwood, Missouri, just west of St. Louis and north of Route 50.

This kiln was built in the mid-1850s by a businessman who needed powdered lime to use in mortar for houses he was building in the area. It is 20 feet on a side and about 40 feet tall, roughly the height of a four-story building.

The kiln is at the base of a hill and is open at the top so limestone rocks could be dumped into it from above. Openings on the sides allowed firewood to be put inside. Burning the wood produced temperatures reaching 800 degrees Fahrenheit, which broke down the limestone rocks into powdered lime. The arch you can see at the bottom was used to shovel the powdered lime out.

The wood that was burned was harvested near the kiln. This resulted in clear cutting, and the trees you see are part of a second-growth forest.

The vertical line on the wall of the kiln is an expansion joint, allowing the walls to expand and contract as the temperature within changed. The kiln itself was built of the same limestone it rendered. To protect it from the heat, the inside walls were lined with firebrick brought from St. Louis. Firebrick is made from a type of clay, often mixed with minerals. It, too, is produced by firing in a kiln. Firebricks are still used today to help contain molten metals and in other applications.

This kiln is the lone survivor of several that were built in the area at about the same time.

Coloma, California

Gold!

On January 24, 1848, a man named James Marshall discovered gold in what is now the town of Coloma, California. At the time, he wasn’t looking for it.

Marshall was a business partner of John Sutter, who needed lumber to develop extensive land holdings in what is now California. The deal: Sutter would finance the construction of a sawmill, and Marshall would build it.

The original Sutter’s Mill didn’t last long. It was completely washed away by the South Fork of the American River, which flows just to the left of the photo above.

The mill you see here is a reconstruction, built to the original plans. Marshall placed his mill near the river because it relied on water power to drive its saw. Water was diverted from the river to run through the mill race (the ditch in the foreground). Water pressure turned the water wheel visible at the bottom of the building, which in turn operated a saw on the upper level.

Marshall had trouble getting water to flow freely enough to drive the saw, and so his workers kept digging at the mill race. One day, while inspecting that work, Marshall looked down at the water trickling past his feet and, using only his hand, scooped up some flakes of metal.

What he said on that occasion is known: “Boys, by God I believe I’ve found a gold mine!” The boys were skeptical.

They suspected the presence of iron pyrite, or fool’s gold, so they ran tests. The metal flakes were bent, bitten, hammered with a rock, and, finally, soaked in lye.

The verdict: Gold!

The result, according to the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, where the mill is located, was “The largest voluntary mass migration of people in history.”

The park, eight miles north of Placerville and Route 50, also features a majestic statue of James Marshall pointing to the spot where he discovered the gold. In real life, he and Sutter likely felt much less than majestic about the whole thing. They both died in poverty.