Buddles

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Stream in Soldiers Delight. I can't remember where this is. Fall 1973.
Stream in Soldiers Delight. I can’t remember exactly where this is. Fall 1973.

As a kid, my favorite thing about Soldiers Delight was playing in the streams. They were very different from all other streams I knew, which were muddy. In Baltimore County walking in a stream generally meant walking in mud. The water in Soldiers Delight streams was clear, and the stream bottoms were mostly stoney. The stream banks were also grassy and sunny. Streams elsewhere could be sunny, but even managed streams through pastures or parks were often lined with a thicket of woody plants. At Soldiers Delight long stretches of streams were lined only with tall grasses and wildflowers. Plus there were minnows and frogs and snakes. These were great streams. Continue reading “Buddles”

Arrested development

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Entrance to the Choate mine.
Entrance to the Choate chromite mine at Soldiers Delight in Maryland. Fall 1973.
Entrance to the Choate mine.
Entrance to the Choate mine. Although trash was being removed from the area, fresh appliances had been dumped above the entrance. Fall 1973.

Soldiers Delight would be a lot less interesting to some were it not for its contribution to the economic history of Baltimore County, Maryland. Serpentine outcrops including Soldiers Delight, Bare Hills, and the State Line Barrens in Pennsylvania supplied most of the world’s chromium ore in the mid 19th century. Issac Tyson, and later his sons, owned land and operated mines at these places, shipping all the chromite to Baltimore and monopolizing the industry from the 1820s until after the Civil War. But the long term impact of this activity may have been more ecological than economic. Continue reading “Arrested development”

Chatanika Dredge

Radio Control
I flipped the joystick 1200 times to trigger the shutter (the 4 GB SD card filled up 10 minutes before I pulled it down).
The S95 captured 1170 photos in 1.5 hours while the Fled flew over the relic Gold Dredge #3 of the Fairbanks Exploration Company (F.E. Company). It was built in place in 1927-1928 and dug its own pond which it moved around until 1958. Hundreds of acres of the Chatanika River valley were turned into these concentric ridges of tailings as the placer gravels were devoured by the floating dredge and disgorged by the systematic arcs of its conveyor arm. Continue reading “Chatanika Dredge”