Spring Brook runs from the woods in the vicinity of the Spring Mine (I assume that both the brook and the mine were named after a spring whose water flowed into the brook). There are a few small streams that run into this brook as well. It passes under Randall Avenue right at the border between Wharton Borough and Mine Hill Township (in fact, it defines the boundary). It then meanders along the side of the hill until it goes under Route 46 near Saint Mary’s Church. Eventually, it merges with Jackson Brook (so named because the water from this was used to power the Jackson Forge, which once stood somewhere in the area of Hurd Park) south of Dover General Hospital to form Granny Brook, which runs through Hurd Park and passes under Route 46 at the foot of the highway bridge that crosses over the railroad tracks of New Jersey Transit’s Morris & Essex Division. It then empties directly into the Rockaway River.
Regarding the Erb Mine, the 1989 Abandoned Mine report by Shea and Pustay does not include it among those mines listed as capped on Page V. In the vicinity of the Erb Mine (the location of which is schematically shown on the maps referred to as “Figure 2” on Page 11 and “Figure 22” on Page 48) are other shafts near and within the power-line easement. According to the latter map, the Erb Mine is about 575 feet east of the power-line easement, while Scrub Oaks’ Shaft No. 3 (this is the original Scrub Oak Mine, a.k.a. the “old workings”, and it is not listed as being capped in the Abandoned Mines report) is less than 50 feet into the trees from this clearing. Since I’ve never been there, I cannot respond to what you saw, other than reiterate that steel headframes are a Twentieth-Century innovation, and even then, they weren’t that common; in fact, Scrub Oaks’ Shaft No. 1 (i.e. the main slope) had a headframe constructed of huge wooden timbers bolted together and covered in corrugated metal sheets. Additionally, I have not seen any mention that the Erb Mine was re-opened after 1891. According to the 1879 New Jersey Geological Survey report, the Erb Mine, which was owned by the Andover Iron Company, had been idle for a decade. Hence, the description in the 1868 report must still be valid: “[the Erb Mine] has not been very extensively worked. The ore is lean, but the vein is eight or nine feet thick, and capable of yielding a great deal of ore. The vein has been sunk on for a depth of forty-five feet, and has been worked forward on for about sixty feet.” This indicates that the depth probably had not been increased much by the 1891 re-exploration, so there really would not be a need for a steel headframe (the report for that year lists the operation as being “abandoned”). Indeed, a simple winch would be sufficient to raise buckets of ore from a shallow working such as this and the miners would have descended into the cavity via wooden ladders affixed to the sides of the shaft. If there are any steel I-beams buried in concrete atop this shaft, these are probably reinforcement bars and not part of a headframe.
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