This is really exciting. I'm finally getting the story of the mine. The first article looks like it was written by Leschen brothers, who built the tramway. The second is from the main man himself. This is really great.

Posting coming soon!

I'll post the article when I finally dig it up; it's in a bound volume in Library storage. This is the first article I've found about the mine and tramway from the time period of its operation.

I was going to look for the obituary for Carlos Moser and J.W. Rutledge. Both died in El Paso county. The JW Rutledge I was looking for was 89 and could have been the John Rutledge in the 1910 census who was an 18 year old customs inspector in Boquillas (his dad was 31 years older, also a John, and also a customs inspector in Boquillas).

I knew when Moser died, thanks to Liz Hicks, Genealogy editor at the German-Texas Heritage Society. (To whom I am extremely grateful for her research help.) So I tried the Alpine Avalanche. No luck, or maybe I missed it. In the winter of 1915, the Avalanche was only published once a week, or maybe that's all that was microfilmed.

Seeing as Moser died in El Paso county, I tried looking in an El Paso paper, namely, the El Paso Herald. Oddly enough, the CAH doesn't have the 1915 editions on microfilm, they have the actual papers. I figured, I'd look on the day he died (not a smart idea) and each day through Sunday, figuring the Sunday edition would pick up any death's that were missed the week prior.

To my dismay, the Herald did not employ that great invention used by time strapped modern society...the Table of Contents. So, I had to slough through stories about Pancho Villa, Germany's aggression, local El Paso happenings, and ads for various snake oil treatments. After a half hour, I was frustrated, because I hadn't found it, but that didn't mean it didn't exist. In other words, it was very easy to get a false negative, while it's impossible to get a false positive (unless I incorrectly identify the subject of the obit).

As is often the case when I'm doing research, I have to go over the same material twice--or more--to really understand what it's telling me. So it was with the El Paso Herald. This is a constant theme in my research and is probably due to my ability to be distracted easily. In general, the material is not that hard to understand. I'll read something and get some stuff out of it. Then, when I hit a brick wall, I'll go back and re-read stuff and find there's more in there to milk.

Deciding that false negatives were too easy to come by, I decided to concentrate on the two days after the day Moser died and went back and scanned each page, column by column. With great relief and a lot of surprise, I found Moser's obituary.

From the El Paso Herald
Wednesday, March 3, 1915
Pg. 3
Center for American History

Owner of Boquillas Del Carmen Mine Dies Here.

"Carlos Moser, owner of the Boquillas del Carmen and other mines in the state of Coahuila, Mex., died Monday evening at a local hospital. The Mexican mine owner was 58 years old at the time of his death and had been operating in Mexico for the past 20 years.

"Mr. Moser was a native of Stuttgart, Germany, and has a brother, Wilhelm Moser, living in Germany. His wife, Mrs. Aimee Lyon Moser, was with him at the time of his death."

OK, it's not much. But it is something. There are a few interesting facts in these two short paragraphs.

1) Clearly, Moser was ill and his wife had enough time to get him to El Paso. From what did he die? My bet would be influenza.

2) They say he was from Coahuila, Mexico (clearly the Boquillas area). Yet, the 1910 census shows him in Marathon. I think he was most likely living near the mines and most likely was the mine engineer and got down to Boquillas as soon as the tramway was operating. Mining Engineer was his profession; I bet the mines are where he wanted to be.

3) Notice they talk of "mines". Plural. Could Moser have hauled most of the ore from this area? According to Gregory's 1908 master's degree thesis, we know there was more than one mine in Boquillas, with the Puerto Rico being the richest. We also know that ASARCO had closed their smelter there by 1907 as they consolidated all their smelting operations that year. Could Moser have been the only one mine owner in Boquillas at that time? He was a freelance mining engineer. Could this have been his first time as a mine owner? If so, could he have lived his dream for the last five years of his life?

4) Notice they call it the "del Carmen Mine". According to Gregory's thesis, there is a mine named "Boquillas del Carmen." It's 51.16 "pertenencias", which is an area measurement. That's the largest mine, in terms of area, in Gregory's list and therefore, probably Boquillas. (The Puerto Rico mine, the most productive mine in Boquillas, is 18 pertencencias.) Could this have been the "del Carmen mine?" If so, is this why the tramway ended five miles away from the entrance to the Puerto Rico mine? Is the entrance to the Boquillas del Carmen mine five miles away from the Puerto Rico mine?

5) We know know where's he from: Stuttgart. Good chance his family either left Germany or perished in the Holocaust.

6) Is wife's maiden name was "Lyon", or is that her middle name? According to the 1910 census, she was from Missouri. Where did they meet? Where did she go after he died? Did she remarry? If so, to whom and where?

So, the point of all this research and conjecture is to find a living relative of Carlos and Aimee Moser. There are no children recorded in the 1910 census--or at least none living with them in Marathon. So, I'm fearful that there are no direct descendents. Direct descendents are the greatest hope for family stories because people would be more apt to know about their grandfather Carlos and grandmother Aimee than they would about their great uncle (or cousin) Carlos and great aunt Aimee.

Carlos was 23 years older than Aimee. They were married in 1908, so they had seven happy years together. Could they have met in San Antonio? If so, would there be a Lyon family in San Antonio? Was she Jewish as well? That would narrow the field. This was the first marriage for both of them.

And what was it like for Aimee to move from San Antonio to Marathon, and then probably to Boquillas? While Carlos would have been used to life in a frontier mining town, would she? In the early 1900's San Antonio was the biggest city in Texas. It was modern; it was booming. While there may have been up to 3000 people in Boquillas, west Texas and northern Mexico would still be the dry, hot and desolate country it is today.

I suspect Aimee would have gone back home after Carlos' death. Would that have been San Antonio? Or, somewhere in Missouri? 1915 is the last date I have for her, when she was 29.

According to the history books, the tramway was built to transport ore from the Puerto Rico mine to the US.

Bob was eight in 1929 and remembers riding the ore buckets from the small tramway that transported the ore from the mouth of the Puerto Rico mine down the mountain. It was dangerous, especially when the buckets were full of ore, so his dad constantly yelled at him and his brothers whenever they did it. According to J.A. Gregory's master's thesis on the Puerto Rico mine in 1908, the "gravity cable" was 1900 feet long. This wasn't the aerial tramway to the cable terminal in the US. It was simply the way they got ore out of the mine for transportation.

Gregory also describes the two roads to the mine. One was used when traveling to/from Boquillas and the other was used to haul the ore to Quatro Cienegas. Bob remembers wagons drawn by 10 mules that hauled the ore to Quatro Cienegas. They were double wagons, with the first wagon full of supplies for the trip and the second one full of ore. His dad would only let him ride for four miles before he had to walk back, so he never made it to Quatro Cienegas.

Bob spent his summers at the mine, as his dad worked there from 1929 until just a few days before his death in 1940. His dad rarely came back to the US.

Interestingly enough, Bob had never heard of the aerial tramway and cable terminal. When I showed him the USGS map that clearly showed the tramway, he asked me, "Are you sure this isn't a proposed tramway?" I said it was the tramway that started operations in 1910.

I recorded him as he read J. A. Gregory's master's thesis and he recognized much of what Gregory described. In it, Gregory describes the aerial tramway; the fact that it was recently surveyed and towers were currently being built; and that the embarkation terminal was five miles away from the Puerto Rico mine. Gregory calculates the cost of transporting the ore from the mine to the tramway using mule drawn freighters and makes a suggestion for installing a narrow guage railroad.

As I said, this was the first time Bob had ever heard of the tramway and he's the closest thing to a living eyewitness I have, even though he was eight years old the first time he went to the mine in 1929 and that was 10 years after the tramway was abandoned. He asked me a question that I don't have answer to, namely, "Why did they need this aerial tramway when they had wagon roads?"

It's a good question. I assume the answer is that when you factor the cost of the construction of the tramway, the cost of transportation over the tramway and on to Marathon, the cost of transporting the ore over to the US side is less expensive than transporting it through Mexico.

Now I assume that's true. I don't know for sure if that's true. Gregory only does a financial analysis assuming the tramway is operation. He doesn't do a comparison analysis by shipping to Quatro Cienegas via wagon train.

Still, it's a good question.

Another good question is why the tramway ended five miles away from the Puerto Rico mine? Why didn't they just go the extra distance to the most productive mine in Boquillas? Could it be this was the most convenient collection point for all the mines in Boquillas? Or, did they simply run out of money and that's as far into Mexico as they afford to build?

I got confused and thought the date I was looking for was March 15th, so I never looked at March 2nd. However, I did finish out the rest of 1915. I found this interesting paragraph from October 28, 1915 on pg. 2:

MINING AND WAX BUSINESS FLOURISHING IN THIS COUNTY
"The big cable across the river used to bring ore from the Boquillas mines to the American side was completed last Friday and teams will begin today hauling the ore to the railroad for shipment. More than 1000 men are employed on the Mexican side and 500 on this side of the river in getting this rock to the railroad."

Weird, because I have citations from 1910 saying the cable was working five years earlier than this article.

So what's going on? Could the reporter have made a mistake? Could this citation be the source of the confusion about the years of operation?

Another hypothesis is that some mechanical failure caused the tramway to close down and it was now fully repaired. In any event, I need more information to piece together this story. When I nail down the story, I'll post the citation to the main website.

The numbers are interesting. At its height in the late 1800's, it was estimated that Boquillas had 3,000 inhabitants. 1000 men and their families could be 3000 total, meaning that in 1915 Boquillas was still going strong. The 500 men on the US side were probably freighters, as the cable terminal itself probably took only two men to run and a one customs officer to inspect.

At a suggestion of another researcher I spoke to recently, I brought photos to show the archivists. That really fired them up and it generated some good conversation. One of the people I spoke to said her family had land in Brewster county; she told me that the park service "blew up" many of the old structures. People in the area started asking, "Yeah, whatever happened to X?" because "X" was no longer there. She said that when they confronted the NPS, they admitted to destroying structures, but didn't say why. Don't know when this occured.

Could the NPS have been involved in salvaging the tramway and terminal? I'm confident that it was salvaged for scrap metal because: 1) there are no rollers to be found that once supported the traction cable (there would have been one roller per side on a tower and pictures of the tramway in operation clearly show them), 2) the big, spoked wheels that powered the traction cable looks like their spokes were individually pulled, 3) there's no evidence of an engine at the cable terminal, and 4) the tramway had two cables (a traction cable and a track cable), but you only ever see one when hiking. The salvage operation is a mystery to me.

One of the librarians escorted me to the map room and introduced to me an archivist there. They were both interested in this project. Unfortunately, we couldn't locate the exact location of the tramway on the survey maps from 1904 and 1915 because they didn't have many physical attributes marked on them. I'll need to bring in a topo map with the tramway marked so that we can superimpose it over the survey maps to determine who most likely owned the land.

The archives did give me some interesting tidbits of information. Many of the blocks were given to railroad companies, like the Galveston and Houston Railway Company, but they were required to sell the land fairly quickly. Also, the land was divided up in a checkerboard pattern, where many of the "black" blocks were given to the railway companies and the "white" blocks were kept by the state. This also made it harder for the railway companies to become land speculators.

More to come when I return to the GLO with a map showing the location of the tramway...

This is the first construction photo I've seen! One shot is front of their mules, the other is in front of their tents. In one shot, one of the men is holding a tea cup and saucer.

I'll post it in a few days.

Mr. Manning is the father-in-law of one of my wife's friends and he lives here in Austin. Wow!

His dad was the mining engineer for Mr. Perry, owner of the Terlingua Quicksilver mine. After his wife died from influenza, the elder Mr. Manning went to down to Mexico in 1929 and submerged himself in the Puerto Rico mine. It was apparently a very productive mine.

The younger Manning was born in 1921 and spent many summers with his dad in the mine. He remembers playing in the ore buckets as a kid and his dad reprimanding him because it was dangerous. He said that his dad used the tramway to get the ore out at one time, although I'm not sure this is true. All history books say the tramway shutdown in 1918, or so, and the elder manning didn't arrive there until 1929. However, there's a possibility that it is true because I've seen a picture from the W.D. Smithers collection at UT Austin showing the tramway in 1928 fully intact. So, there's a possibility that they used it.

Still, it sounds like Johnston & Manning Asociación Minevadas (sp?) worked the mine after it was abandoned by the previous "tenents", probably the ones for whom the tramway was built. He said no one really "owned" the mine. In Mexico, he said, things worked differently. Through a process translated as "Denouncement" in English, you could go into Mexico and "claim" land that no one else claimed and filing the appropriate papers. This is what his dad and Johnston did. I also think this could have been what Carlos Moser did as well.

They mined silver and lead (where's the zinc?), mixed together in an ore he called "galena". He said that around WWII, they were mining manganeese out of the Puerto Rico mine, which was used to strengthen steel. They used five or so big International Harvester trucks to transport the ore from the mine to Marathon.

He said if wasn't so old, he'd go down there with me and show me around. I would love to go there with him. What stories!

The geneology editor did research on my behalf on the "1910 Texas Census".

According to that census, he was living in hotel run or owned by a John M. Chambers in Precinct 3, Brewster County. So, it looks to me that he moved from San Antonio to get closer to the ore terminal, once ore started being moved on a regular basis.

He was born 1857 in Germany. He emmigrated in 1881 and became a Naturalized citizen. His occupation is "Miner, works in Mines on own". He has 52 at the time of the Census, his wife, Aimee L. Moser, was 29. She was born in Missouri.

The editor couldn't find any children. I'm surprised she found anything, as I didn't find Carlos Moser in any Texas census.

Still, this is a great lead and hopefully I can find descendents of Carlos Moser.

The only thing I found, were these citations from the San Antonio phone directories, courtesy of the San Antonio Conservation Society.

From the 1908 City Directory:
Moser Carlos, r 221 Slocum Place

From the 1910 City Directory:
Del Carmen Mining Company (C Moser Pres), Alamo Bank Bldg.
Moser Carlos, pres Del Carmen Mining Co. r 106 W. Pecan. [His office was in Room 312; the phone book published tenant directory of major buildings in town.]

There was also a citation for a Thomas Palfrey. Maybe he's related to Paul Paulfrey, Farmer's boss.

From the 1912 Directory:
Palfrey, Thomas B. mgr The Medina Irrigation Co, off Swearingen-Mcrow Bldg. h 111 E Laurel (Barbara Lee); 0 1495, N 1279.

The directories published data from the previous year; so that for example, the 1910 directory is really from much of 1909.

This is cool. Now I know that Moser wasn't just the "promoter" as Farmer Jennings wrote. He was the President of the company. And, he's becoming more of real person, now that I know where he lived. 106 W. Pecan is currently a parking lot. Slocum Place didn't appear on the current map I had with me in my car.

My time spent in other libraries was a bust. No one's heard of Carlos Moser, nor the del Carmen Mining Company.

On the way back to Austin, I stopped off at the Humphries Cemetary in Martindale, near San Marcos. That's where Farmer Jennings is buried. I guess I went because I'm trying to understand the people who worked at the ore terminal as real people. While cemetaries are not my thing, it's satisfying to find the real people who make up the story.

I followed up with Mrs. X today and she gave me her sister-in-law's name and number in Palestine, TX. So, I called Mrs. Y, Farmer Jennings' daughter. Mrs. Y was very nice and we spoke for about 30 minutes. It was so exciting to talk to someone so close to the man who built the ore terminal and aerial tramway. Mrs. Y is the family historian. She said Farmer didn't speak much about the tramway and ore terminal; I've found in my research that men from that time period in that part of Texas spent little time talking and when they did talk, it was about cattle. Still, two things she mentioned reverberated with me:
1) Farmer told her he thought the whole thing was a scam.
2) She thought it was near Dryden, or Sanderson, Texas, which would have been much east of Boquillas (I think maybe 60 miles east).

Mrs. Y said she and her husband had gone looking for the tramway near Sanderson, but never found it.

More intrigue... (Why is it that every turn in the story seems to contradict every other?)

She said she didn't have his memoirs handy, but her children had a copy and that I should call her son, Mr. Z in Houston.

So, I called Mr. Z this evening. His mom had called him earlier today letting him know I'd call. He had the manuscript ready. Most of it had to do with cattle ranching in the area in Mexico south of Sanderson, but what he did discuss of the building of the tramway and terminal was so exciting. Finally, I am getting the story of people who lived and worked there!

I'll summarize now because I'm thrilled to finally be learning the story, but I'll post the manuscript when I recieve it, as Mr. Z has agreed to let me do so!

It sounds like Farmer was the foreman, working under a director, at least while improving what sounds like the Old Ore Road. It took them 60 days to grade the road from the Terminal to Persimmon Gap using Mexican Laborers, hand tools, and a grater (whatever that was). Then, it took another 30 days to get to Marathon.

Farmer then worked under a German engineer when building the tramway and terminal. He could only speak German and Spanish. It sounded like once the towers and terminal were built, Farmer transferred to Marathon to manage the delivery of the cables, while the engineer stayed on-site. It took a year's time to string the cable and the larger spools weighed up to 12,000 pounds and took 10 mules to haul from Marathon to the Ernst Basin.

Also, they ran out of money. The stockholders met for two days in San Antonio's Southern hotel, "cussin' and discussin'". Sounds like the investors gave the deal to the promoter. There were many small investors. There will be more details once I post the manuscript.

The manuscript confirms that it was the Del Carmen company, so that, coupled with the $100,000 figure which Gomez also mentions in his book "A Most Singular Country," and the fact that Farmer mentioned 2 miles of the tramway went into Mexico and 4 miles into the US, I'm now convinced that Farmer Jennings helped build this aerial tramway and terminal.

I'm looking forward to being able to tell Mrs. Y that the tramway her dad built is in big bend and she can see pictures of it for the first time on my website!

I'm now pretty much convinced this is the Farmer Jennings as cited in Arthur Gomez's book...and he's the only one that any author mentions by name who was associated with this thing.

So today, I thought I'd do a little back tracking. I was reading about the indices at the Center for American History's website and somehow ended up trying to find out where Farmer Jennings was buried. I knew it was near San Marcos, TX. Seeing as I'm in Austin, I was thinking I'd go down to photograph the headstone.

I had done this research before, so all I was doing was trying to find the exact location so that I could drive there. Turns out, the cemetary has a website. It's called Humphries Cemetery. Farmer's buried there.

So, I emailed the webmaster, also a Jennings, to see if he had any information to share.

I also discovered the webmaster had another site dedicated to the Jennings Family. There's a picture there of Farmer's headstone. To see it, go here and click on page eight. It's the picture named "tombstone_rfj".

The webmaster then emailed me saying he didn't have much info on Farmer, but gave me the name of another person to contact South of Austin that may know more. So it looks like I'm back on track. Hopefully, the discussion with that person will prove fruitful.

Hiking the trail and being overwhelmed by the physical challenge of building the tramway made me think of the people involved in mythic terms. Man taming nature; man against all odds. Talking to descendents and seeing his tombstone makes Jennings more human to me. It's almost like I've got faint outlines of his life and am just beginning to fill in the picture with a little color.

This Farmer Jennings is the one that shows up in the 1930's census in El Paso. He was born in 1882, which would make him around 24 when the tramway and terminal was built, so he is a candidate. There are no other Farmer Jennings in the US Census in Texas, so I think he's the one.

Despite her not knowing, it's thrilling talking to someone who's most likely a descendent. She said she'd do a little research; hopefully it will come to something.