The venerable Miners Foundry on Spring street in Nevada City can boast more than a century and a half of community service as a commercial and as a cultural center. Let's take a look at a few of those who made the buildings home beginning with its construction in 1856 and continuing to today. This is Part I.

The great fire of July 1856 "almost blotted from existence" much of Nevada City. One of the buildings destroyed in that fire was the small Nevada Foundry behind the National Hotel on Spring Street, operated by Edward Coker.

After the fire, Coker acquired the present Miners Foundry site at Bridge and Spring streets and commenced building what today is known as the Great Stone Hall. Shortly thereafter, he sold his business to Thom and Williams, who continued construction of the foundry buildings.

George G. Allan entered the foundry business in 1867, in partnership with David Thom. The two continued the name Nevada Foundry, where they fabricated a variety of mining equipment including ore cars, metal water pipe for flumes and hydraulic mining, stamp mills and myriad other mining tools and equipment.

In December 1876, George G. Allan became the sole owner, and the business became known as George G. Allan's Foundry and Machine Works.

Allan, a native of Scotland, moved to California in 1853. He was a mine owner and a civic leader who served a term as a county supervisor and two terms as a Trustee of Nevada City, equivalent to a today's city councilman.

In the late 1880s, Lester A. Pelton, of Camptonville in neighboring Yuba County, invented a new type of water wheel. He bought his invention to Allan's Foundry, where he and Allan tested the wheel on the banks of Deer Creek. Eventually, a two-foot wheel of cast iron with iron buckets bolted to the rim was tested. The wheel proved successful in hydro-electric and compressed-air generation and in running belt-driven machinery.



Success and growth

Orders for Pelton wheels in sizes ranging up to 14 feet overwhelmed the foundry's capability.

The "foundry was overburdened with orders from everywhere and... really needed a big company in a large city with water and rail transportation (to ship the wheel, as) there was such a demand for (it) to operate... electric generators."

Production was moved to San Francisco, where the Pelton Company was formed. Limited production of Pelton wheels continued at the foundry into the early 1900s.

For more than a century, the Pelton water wheel and its direct descendants were and still are extensively used in hydro-electric power generation. It is simply a "water turbine, a rotor driven by impulse of a jet of water upon curved buckets fixed to its periphery."

Today, examples of the Pelton wheel can be seen in the North Star Powerhouse Museum at Boston Ravine in Grass Valley, where the world's largest wheel is on display. The 30-foot behemoth used to supply compressed air to the North Star mine is the museum's center piece. Other smaller wheel can also be seen there.

On display in Nevada City's Robinson Plaza is a Pelton wheel that was "In continuous use PG&E Drum Power House No. 4, 1928-1987. Produced 18,000 HP at 257 RPM and enough electrical power for 16,000 households. Twelve feet diameter, weight 15 tons. Built in San Francisco by Pelton Company. A... gift to Nevada City by Pacific Gas and Electric." It was mounted in an upright in 1987.

The original two-foot "demonstrator" Pelton wheel is owned by the Nevada County Historical Society and is displayed at the Firehouse Museum in Nevada City.

By 1908, W.H. Martin, a Nevada City mine owner, had acquired the foundry. By then it was known as Miners' Foundry. Martin's ownership continued for years.

Others past users include Richard Goyne, operating as Miners Foundry and Manufacturing Co.; Roy Zimmerman, RYP Food Processing Equipment; and Roy Amick, heavy steel fabrication.

In 1972, the Miners' Foundry was purchased by the newly incorporated nonprofit American Victorian Museum, a project conceived by Nevada City residents David Osborn and Charles Woods

NEXT TIME: Miners' Foundry becomes the American Victorian Museum



Bob Wyckoff is a retired Nevada County newspaper editor/publisher and author of local history publications including "The Way It Was; Looking Back at Nevada County," published by and available at The Union newspaper, 464 Sutton Way, Grass Valley. Contact him at bobwyckoff@sbcglobal.net or PO Box 216, Nevada City CA 95959.



CUTLINES



1. ALLAN'S FOUNDRY as it appeared in this 1879 sketch from

"A History of Nevada County, California-1880," published by

Thompson & West, Oakland CA.



2. MINERS' FOUNDRY, c.1962. Compare it to the litho.

-Photo by Bob Wyckoff



3. LAST METAL WORKS in what today is the Great Hall prior to

becoming the American Victorian Museum, c. early 1970s.

-Photo by Bob Wyckoff



TIMELINES



NOTICE: I've been away from my computer off and on for the past two months and missed answering most of my e-mail pertaining to the Feb. 9 photo history feature, for which I humbly apologize.

Here are those who guesses came in after Feb. 12 and were not listed last time: Brewer, Alling, Nunnink, O'Hara and Fondiller. I really appreciate all those who regularly play our little photo history quiz. I've had people stop me in the street to give me answers and tell me that they play regularly but don't submit answers. Okay, now to Feb. 23: D & P Painter, Townsend, Dundas, Berggen, Hartnick, TroyEllen, Goodspeed, Drievold, Valceschini, Brunell, Stewart, Dodds, Worden, Jaynes, Flanigan, Hayden, Clingan, Worthington, Sowell, Holbrook and Evans.

TODAY: What's it and where's it?

Answers to: bobwyckoff@sbcglobal.net or PO Box 216, Nevada City CA 95959.