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Best Mining Cog Railways and Funiculars You Can Ride
Many historic mines used inclined-plane railways or cog tracks to move ore and men up impossible gradients. Several still run as visitor attractions.
Best Mining Ghost Towns to Visit
When the ore ran out, the towns died. Ghost towns from the American west to Mexico, Chile and Australia preserve a bittersweet record of boom and collapse.
Best Underground Mine Boat Tours
A handful of mines preserve flooded galleries that can be navigated by boat — small punts, brine-lake gondolas or even rail-mounted electric craft. These are among the most unusual
Best Mines That Became Museums
Some of the world's finest museums are former working mines — preserving headframes, galleries and machinery on the actual ground where they were used.
Read more →Mining Disasters That Changed Safety Laws
Mining safety is mostly written in tombstones. The major reforms in mining law worldwide have followed major disasters — the Senghenydd explosion, Monongah, Courrières, Aberfan, Ma
Read more →The Geopolitics of Copper: Zambia, Chile and the World
Copper is the metal of the electrified economy. Two countries — Chile and Zambia, together with the DRC's Katanga — hold the dominant share of the world's reserves and have shaped,
Read more →Modern Mine Remediation and Rewilding
What happens to a mine when it closes? From the Ruhr's post-industrial parks to the Welsh re-greening of slate spoil, mine remediation is now a vast global engineering and ecologic
Read more →Canaries and Gas Detection in Mines: A History of Safety Below Ground
From candle flames to electronic sensors, mining has needed ways to detect the gases that killed miners by the thousand. The canary was perhaps the most famous — and the most accid
Read more →Cornish Migration and 'Cousin Jack': How Cornwall Exported Its Miners
When Cornish tin mining collapsed in the second half of the 19th century, perhaps 250 000 Cornish miners emigrated. 'Cousin Jacks' worked from Wisconsin to the Witwatersrand and le
Read more →Child Labour in the Mines: History and Reform
For most of mining history, children worked underground. The 1842 British Mines Act marked the start of a long, uneven reform process — one still incomplete in parts of the world t
Read more →The Australian Gold Rushes Explained
Edward Hargraves's discovery near Bathurst in 1851 set off a series of Australian gold rushes that doubled the colony's population in a decade. The rushes shaped Victorian and New
Read more →The California Gold Rush Explained
James Marshall's discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in January 1848 set off the largest mass migration in 19th-century American history. The Gold Rush reshaped California, the Unit
Read more →Kongsberg Silver Mines: A Deep Dive into Norway's Royal Heritage
From 1623 to 1958 the silver mines of Kongsberg produced 1.35 million kg of silver under royal Danish-Norwegian ownership. The visitor mine south-west of Oslo is one of the deepest
Read more →Idrija Mercury Mine: A Deep Dive into Slovenia's UNESCO Industrial Heritage
Idrija in western Slovenia was Europe's second-largest mercury producer for 500 years. Inscribed jointly with Almadén in 2012, the mine, the museum and the town form one of the wor
Read more →Kiruna Iron Mine: A Deep Dive into the World's Largest Underground Iron Operation
The Kirunavaara iron deposit in Swedish Lapland produces high-grade magnetite ore that has fed European steel for over a century. The mine is now so vast that the city above it is
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