Comments on: Horseshoe Canyon tramway

By: Christopher Cook

Christopher Cook — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 21:01:55 +0000

@ Maury:

Cool account about the fire. I’ve also heard that the hillside is littered with old shafts. I could imagine that a fire could smolder for quite some time in old complex like that. I wonder when the fire was, maybe there is some newspaper accounts of it.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 23:54:45 +0000

The place to check for old photos is the History Room at the main library.

Now you make we want to poke around the hills there.

By: Maury Polse

Maury Polse — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 21:07:53 +0000

Belfast Ave. was a great place to live. Full of “Baby boomers”. For first 19 yrs. lived in the hills. Places like “Cement Ft.” the tram works near “Devils Punchbowl” Or “Rock Ft.” where great piles of rocks were in front of small draws on the hill side??? “Do not go near the mines” our folks would say, right! The Hotel mine was right up the hill above the “Tunnel” which housed a conveyor down to Laundry farm bunker. As far as I know a couple of my friends and I were the last people in the Stauffer mine when a rain storm opened an entrance behind the newly built Leona Lodge.
Any Pics of the trams or the tunnel in action? Mr. Robiano, about 90 in 1960, talked about the haze over the hills from a mine fire that burned for years! M P

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:39:14 +0000

Thanks for tracking that down!

By the way, Peggy and Pat Perazzo, the creators of quarriesandbeyond, live just over the hill and were on hand for my quarry walk last weekend.

By: Russell Yee, Oakland

Russell Yee, Oakland — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:53:06 +0000

Steve Mix’s fabulous old prodigy.net map looks to be gone, but replaced by a far better one here: https://picasaweb.google.com/106313661130472975881/OaklandHistory#5652732157676157330

See also the relevant listing in this exhaustive catalog of historic quarries:
http://quarriesandbeyond.org/states/ca/quarry_photo/ca-alameda_photos.html#list_of_quarries

“Leona Heights Quarry; E. B. & A. L. Stone Company, 900 Broadway, Oakland, owner; G. H. Luchs, superintendent. It was formerly the California Improvement Company’ quarry. It is on Laundry Farm, on the summit of a prominent ridge, one mile north of Mills College. The rock is a fine-grained basalt, and is used for macadam and concrete. The quarry face is about 125 feet high. Two gravity trams, one 2500 feet long and the other 1200 feet, take the rock from the quarry to the crusher at the termini of the railroads, both narrow and broad gauge. About 300 yards a day are rushed by two Gates crushers. Electricity is used for power. thirty-five men are at work in the quarry.”