Philip Deidesheimer was a

mining engineer Mining engineering is the extraction of minerals from the ground. It is associated with many other disciplines, such as mineral processing, exploration, excavation, geology, metallurgy, geotechnical engineering and surveying. A mining engineer m ...

in the

Western United States The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. As American settlement i ...

. Deidesheimer was born in 1832, in

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...

Electorate of Hesse The Electorate of Hesse (), also known as Hesse-Kassel or Kurhessen, was the title used for the former Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel after an 1803 reform where the Holy Roman Emperor elevated its ruler to the rank of Elector, thus giving him ...

before German unification. He attended the prestigious Freiberg University of Mining (''Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg'') and emigrated to California in 1852. He died on 21 July 1916 in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Career

In 1852, at nineteen, the young mining engineer traveled to the

California gold fields The California gold rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the Uni ...

to work for several years, including in Georgetown. In April 1860 he was hired by W. F. Babcock, a trustee of the Ophir Mine, part of the

Comstock Lode The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada (then western Utah Territory), which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the U ...

silver mining boom in Nevada, and solved one of the Comstock mines' most critical engineering needs.

Comstock Lode

Square set timbering

Deidesheimer invented a system, now known as square set timbering, using heavy

timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...

"cubes" as supports for underground

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

tunnels and shafts, that enabled skilled miners to open three-dimensional cavities of any size. In large openings, the cubes could be filled with waste rock, creating a solid pillar of wood and rock from floor to roof ("back" in miner's terminology). Deidesheimer created the square set timbering system for the Comstock Lode's Ophir Mine in

Virginia City, Nevada Virginia City is a census-designated place (CDP) that is the county seat of Storey County, Nevada, United States, and the largest community in the county. The city is a part of the Reno, Nevada, Reno–Sparks, Nevada, Sparks Reno, NV Metropolitan ...

, in 1860.Grant H. Smith (1943). ''The History of the Comstock Lode''. The system, which was inspired by the structure of

honeycomb A honeycomb is a mass of Triangular prismatic honeycomb#Hexagonal prismatic honeycomb, hexagonal prismatic cells built from beeswax by honey bees in their beehive, nests to contain their brood (eggs, larvae, and pupae) and stores of honey and pol ...

s, enabled mining of the large silver orebodies of the

, which were in very weak rock—in miner's terms, "heavy ground". Deidesheimer refused to

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

the innovation, which was easily the most important mining innovation of 1860.Rodman W Paul (1963). ''Mining frontiers of the Far West, 1848–1880''. p. 64. . ; Ophir Mine As was common with the Comstock mines, the rock in the Ophir Mine was soft and easily collapsed into the working stopes (cavities where ore is extracted). In addition, the presence of clay that would swell greatly upon exposure to air caused great pressures that the mine timbering of that day could not hold back. The square set timbering method devised by Deideshimer slowed the swelling action long enough for ore extraction, though with time and decay the timbering was crushed by the enormous pressures found in the Comstock mines. Deidesheimer was made superintendent of the Ophir Mine by mine owner

William Sharon William Tang Sharon (January 9, 1821November 13, 1885) was a United States senator, banker, and business owner from Nevada who profited from the Comstock Lode. Early life Sharon was born in Smithfield, Ohio, January 9, 1821, the son of Willia ...

in early 1875. He was bankrupted by speculation in mining stocks in 1878.

Other mines

In 1866 Deidesheimer designed and supervised the construction of the Hope Mill and

smelter Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zin ...

for the St. Louis and Montana Mining Company, to process silver ore from nearby mines in Granite County,

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

. The town that formed around the Hope Mill was named Philipsburg, in honor of Philip Deidesheimer. After the decline of the Comstock mines in the late 1870s, Deideshimer continued his successful mining engineer career at the Young America Mine in Sierra City, California, where he was one of the five mine owners made rich over the five years of good production at that mine.

In media

The development of his square-set timbering method was fictionalized in "The Philip Deidesheimer Story", a 1959 first-season episode of the American television series ''

Bonanza ''Bonanza'' is an American Western television series that ran on NBC from September 12, 1959, to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 431 episodes, ''Bonanza'' is NBC's longest-running Western, the second-longest-running Western series on ...

'', in which John Beal portrayed the title character. Philip Deidesheimer was the subject of the NPR radio program '' The Engines of Our Ingenuity'' in episode 1901 and was inducted into the (USA) National Mining Hall of Fame.National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum – Leadville, Colorado, minerals, gems, history

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Deidesheimer, Philip

Underground mining Mining is the extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or feasibly created artificially in a la ...