The Mormon Coal Mine in Point Loma

By Debbie L. Sklar / Special to the OB Rag

In 1855, a group of San Diegans began prospecting for coal on Point Loma.

The project was an ambitious one. The San Diego Coal Co. hoped to develop the deposit into a local source of fuel and a profitable business for its investors. A local coal supply also could have helped San Diego compete as a coaling station for steamships and potentially benefit from future railroad development.

The men behind the venture were associated with San Diego’s small Mormon community. Among them was Ephraim Green, a former member of the Mormon Battalion who later said he had noticed coal on Point Loma before leaving San Diego in 1847.

The story has acquired a mythology of its own. One version says the Mormon prospectors were acting on a “revelation” that coal could be found there. But the historical record tells a more complicated story.

Reports of possible coal deposits on Point Loma dated to at least 1849. In 1855, Green returned to California and told members of the Mormon colony at San Bernardino about the coal he remembered seeing on Point Loma. He eventually led interested men to the site.

The prospecting soon became a formal business.

The San Diego Coal Co. was formed in November 1855 by Green, H.C. Ladd, George Warren Sirrine and Seth Benjamin Tanner. The city trustees leased 40 acres on the ocean side of Point Loma for 15 years for the purpose of opening and working a coal mine. The company later offered its first public shares for $100 each.

Green and at least one other man initially made small lateral holes into the cliff using hand tools. Between Nov. 1 and Nov. 19, they collected nearly a bushel of coal, which they took to a local blacksmith for testing. The results were favorable.

The company then moved ahead with more extensive exploration.

After nearly 90 days of exploratory boring, the miners reached a depth of about 82 feet and reported a coal vein approximately 4½ feet thick. They sold the boring equipment and began digging a main vertical shaft, which they calculated would need to reach 190 feet to reach the wider coal seam.

The work was difficult from the beginning.

Between March and May 1856, Ladd’s crew dug to 60 feet, using blasting powder and hand tools to loosen the dirt and rock and a bucket to remove the material. The bucket fell down the shaft on at least two occasions, injuring workers.

Water soon became another major obstacle.

By June 1856, water was seeping into the shaft. The pace of excavation slowed and sometimes stopped as the miners struggled to keep the shaft clear. Cahuilla laborers were brought in to help with the work. Despite the water, the miners reached the 160-foot mark by the end of August.

The company purchased a pump, along with a steam engine and boiler, from San Francisco. But the equipment arrived late, and the machinery was difficult to transport over San Diego’s rough roads to the Point Loma site. The pump ultimately proved faulty and failed to keep the shaft sufficiently clear.

The delays were costly.

The mine consumed thousands of man-hours and thousands of dollars from investors. By the end of its first year, the company was only a few vertical feet from the coal reserve it believed could make the operation profitable.

But the difficulties continued. Work was suspended for nearly a month in June 1857 because of a shortage of experienced miners. By then, the operation was struggling with water, equipment problems, delays and the loss of key personnel.

Exactly two years after its incorporation, the San Diego Herald reported that the company was abandoning the operation. Most of the original entrepreneurs and laborers left. By 1858, the San Diego Coal Co. apparently had ceased operations.

The mine did leave a record on the landscape.

A May 1870 map by San Diego city engineer James Pascoe shows the location of the coal mine. The map is preserved in the San Diego History Center’s research archives.

The old shaft was still visible nearly a century later. San Diego History Center photographs from 1954 show the exposed mineshaft and visitors looking into the old mine.

The San Diego Coal Co. never became the profitable mining operation its investors had envisioned. But it represents one of San Diego’s earliest serious attempts to develop a local mineral resource.

For a community still trying to establish itself in the 1850s, the possibility of having coal on Point Loma offered the prospect of a locally available fuel source and another way to strengthen San Diego’s young economy.

The coal mine ultimately failed. But the shaft became part of Point Loma’s early history, surviving in photographs and historical records as evidence of an ambitious attempt to find a valuable resource beneath the peninsula.

Sources:

Bradley Hill, “The San Diego Coal Company: An Early Mormon Enterprise on Point Loma,” Journal of San Diego History, Vol. 56, Nos. 1-2, Winter/Spring 2010.
Read the full San Diego History Center article

Iris Engstrand, “Merchants and Dons,” Journal of San Diego History, 1975.
Read the San Diego History Center article

William E. Smythe, History of San Diego, 1542–1908.

San Diego History Center research archives.