The area is revamping one of the numerous abandoned mining tunnels left over from the Gold Rush days into an underground railway. The enclosed cars will take skiers (and summer visitors) three miles into the heart of the Wasatch Mountains via the old Spiro Tunnel. From there the travelers will take a vertical lift, reworked from the old Thaynes Shaft, up 1,800 feet to the surface.
Once out in the open, the skier can then ski down or take a chair on up to the summit of the mountain for a run totaling 2,662 vertical feet.
The developers, United Park City Mines, Inc., expect that the half-hour, tramway-elevator ride will take some of the early-morning rush off its conventional uphill facilities and also provide a unique summer tourist attraction. The uphill chair at the Thaynes elevator shaft ends at the top terminal of the area’s gondola. The gondola will serve as a downhill vehicle for the summer trade.
Crews are now pushing hard to complete the whole complex for a December opening. In Denver, the Card Mfg. Co. is fabricating the passenger cars for the horizontal tramway system, consisting of two trains, each pulling five cars equipped with plastic bubble top. Capacity is 24 per car. Midway in the tunnel there is a widened space permitting the trains to pass each other. Electrically-powered engines—the kind used to pull ore cars in working mines—will haul the trains along at a 10 to 15 mph speed. The elevator cars in the Thaynes shaft are being made by a Salt Lake City company and are designed so that each of the two shafts will have a stack of four cages. Each cage will hold eight persons, and as one cluster of cages carries 32 persons up, the second stack will be coming down simultaneously to pick up another 32.
The present construction operations are sights in themselves. Inside the mine, workers are replacing timber where the tunnel cuts through “heavy” formations. This is where the ceilings and wall tend to peel or sluff away from the formation, the only spot in the tunnel that needs bracing. A section piercing the so-called Woodside shale will be sprayed with a cement mixture to seal it against the destructive effects of air.
At the tunnel entry near Park City itself, the miners—with electric head lamps lit—straddle the passenger car that takes them “up-tunnel.” The train—like those one sees at amusement parks—rattles and rolls as it moves into the dark cold of the tunnel.
Along the track a rivulet of water flows toward the mine’s mouth and is guided through a large steel pipe which lies along the track.
When at times the water floods over the tracks, the train moves through leaving a small churning wake like a motor boat.
A pinpoint of light in the distance eventually proves to be the headlamp of a worker. He and a companion are working by themselves. By the track are their mine cycles. These fit on the rails with four flanged wheels. The miners pedal them into the mine, much as one would ride a bicycle.
Mine superintendent Arthur Gray stops the train at one point and clambers into nearby crosscut. Just over a pile of rock is a large living room-like chamber. It is festooned with iron pyrite, crystalline nuggests called “fool’s gold.”
The train reaches the Thaynes shaft. There the elevators stand ready under a constant rain of water flowing from the formation above. Slickers are mandatory.
The elevator rises quickly and the flood of water soon ends. Aloft, the elevator stops in the hoist house, a large structure housing the electric machinery—a vintage piece as handsome and as well kept and polished as a vintage Pierce Arrow.
It’ll be a fine show for the tourist. It’ll be a good assist for the impatient weekend skier. For him, mine travel may quickly lose its allure, but it will eventually get him out on the snow.
