Black Trout Adit ( pl, Sztolnia Czarnego Pstrąga) is the longest (600 meters) underground tourist route in Poland travelled by boats. It's a part of one of 8

adit An adit (from Latin ''aditus'', entrance) is an entrance to an underground mine which is horizontal or nearly horizontal, by which the mine can be entered, drained of water, ventilated, and minerals extracted at the lowest convenient level. Adits ...

s dug in the area to drain the workings. The Black Trout Adit is located in a park in the west of the town

Tarnowskie Góry Tarnowskie Góry (German: ''Tarnowitz''; szl, Tarnowske Gōry) is a town in Silesia, southern Poland, located in the Silesian Highlands near Katowice. On the south it borders the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union, a megalopolis, the greater Si ...

. Access is by two shafts Ewa and Sylwester (the traffic is alternating). The guide puts the boats in motion and tells the stories connected with the place.

History

The region of Tarnowskie Góry is known for historic

lead ore Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cut, le ...

mining. The lead ores contains a large admixture of silver. Beginning in 1526 when new deposits of lead (mostly

galena Galena, also called lead glance, is the natural mineral form of lead(II) sulfide (PbS). It is the most important ore of lead and an important source of silver. Galena is one of the most abundant and widely distributed sulfide minerals. It cryst ...

) were found, the settlement started to grow quickly. In 1526

Jan II the Good Jan II of Opole ( pl, Jan II Dobry) ( – 27 March 1532) was a Duke of Opole-Brzeg (until 1481)- Strzelce-Niemodlin in 1476 (with his brothers as co-rulers during 1476), ruler over Gliwice (in 1494), Toszek (in 1495), Niemodlin (again, in 1497), By ...

the

Duke of Opole The following is a list of monarchs who used the title Duke of Opole and controlled the city and the surrounding area either directly or indirectly (see also Duchy of Opole). Piast dynasty * 1163-1173 Bolesław I the Tall (Bolesław Wysoki), Du ...

granted the community the status of an independent mining town. The name of the town Tarnowskie Góry has a mining genesis. The first part "Tarnowskie" comes from the name of village "Tarnowice" where deposits of lead enriched by silver were found. Currently Tarnowice (actually Stare Tarnowice) is a district of Tarnowskie Góry. The second part of the name "Góry", the old-Polish dialect word for "mines". Current meaning of the word "Góry" is "mountains" and may be confusing. Mining industry had to wrestle with the problem of water flooding workings. To prevent it in 1788 the first steam engine was brought from England by Fryderyk Wilhelm Hrabia von Reden. The other way to drain workings was digging adits which piped the water using the difference of level. There were 8 adits in Tarnowskie Góry. A 600-meter part of former "

Fryderyk The Fryderyk is the annual award in Polish music. Its name refers to the original Polish spelling variant of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin's first name. Its status in the Polish public can be compared to the American Grammy and the UK's BRI ...

" adit, built in 1821-1834, is available for tourists.Zalewski, Paweł (ed.) (2008). ''Technika''. Warsaw: Carta Blanca. {{in lang, pl. p.264 The lead-ore mining in Tarnowskie Góry stopped in 1912 because of resource shortage. However a huge amount of past mining traces is left, both underground and overground. The tourist route was opened in 1957. Due to terrain profile, the route is located 20 to 30 m underground, and is 600 m long. Access is by two shafts with staircases: 30-metre deep "Sylwester" (Sylvester) built in 1828 and 20-metre deep "Ewa" (Eve) built in 1826. Its current name Black Trout Adit came from trouts, that used to penetrate the adit from a river, seeming black in dim lights. Width of the adit varies from 1.2 m to 2.5 m, height to 4 m, water depth from 0.7 m to 1 m. The tourists travel in boat trains, pushed forward by guides. The Historic Silver Mine is also nearby.

References

External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20160212050745/http://www.kopalniasrebra.pl/EN/sztolnia/sztolnia.php Tarnowskie Góry County Tourist attractions in Silesian Voivodeship