Chapter II: Fever of the Copper Ore  (continued)

Like many of his contemporaries, Obediah Hodder clung to the belief that a sophisticated surface outlay could compensate for an indifferent mineral deposit. Disregarding the Sleepy Cove orebody's limited size and copper content, he spent $225,000 on importing the latest mine equipment from the United States. Older Twillingate residents can recall its arrival by steamship in the fall of 1908; Crow Head men still relate the problems in hauling it piece by piece over the snow from Twillingate to the mine site using horses and sleds.

To obtain an idea of how the Sleepy Cove mine appeared in its prime, one can look in the Crow Head Town Hall at Melvin Sharpe's colourful mural of the old site. One wood-burning steam engine hoisted the ore up the shaft. Another ran the cable cars along the tramway between the shaft and the crusher. A turntable centrifuged the ore from the barren rock, and yet another steam-powered tramway carried the ore to the wharf.

For all its impressiveness, the machinery had little chance to perform. Of the three ships that came to remove ore, one carried 560 tons to an unknown destination in 1910; another abandoned loading operations after high winds drove it onto rocks; and a third took ore to New York where it sat unclaimed for months before the American Smelting and Refining Company bought it in 1915 or 1916.

Obediah Hodder stopped mining around 1917 to start up a cooperage in Twillingate, but later returned to Pennsylvania. His abandoned mining and cooperage machinery lay rusting until the Crow Head Town Council gathered it together and transformed it with crimson and yellow paint into playground equipment for children of the village.

Miscellaneous Mines of Notre Dame Bay

Although the preceding mines were the more successful or well-known of the copper boom, numerous other shafts of forgotten origin riddle the coastal and inland regions of Notre Dame Bay. Prospects such as that at Delaney near the head of Little Bay worked in 1883 by Captain Maynard; at Shoal Arm near Little Bay worked in 1881 by Captain Brown; at Mine Cove near Springdale worked in 1881 by Captain Muir - these are but a few of the mining properties that produced nothing but a local legend and a hole in the ground. On the other hand, some copper properties found before or at the turn of the twentieth century were not exploited successfully at once, but remained alive in people's memories until the financial, political or scientific climate grew suitable for their development: the Buchans, Gull Pond, Rambler and Whalesback copper deposits were recognised for years before they became commercial operations.

Ship loading 'iron ore' from the Fortune Harbour iron mine, with tramway in foreground. Print was reproduced from postcard photo made by unidentified American tourist, c. 1897. (II/7.) (38Kb)

The sheer number of copper mines in Notre Dame between 1864 and World War I may give the impression that mining in the district consisted solely of the exploitation of copper ore. By and large this was true, but there were noteworthy exceptions, those being a lead mine in Bear Cove, an iron mine in Fortune Harbour and an arsenic and an antimony mine, both in Mortons Harbour.

The Hodder family of Twillingate Island played a varied, if minor, role in the Newfoundland mining industry. James Hodder and his son, Edgar, staked the sleepy Cove deposit; Edgar's brother, Obediah, worked it; and James' brother, George, staked and attempted to develop the antimony deposit of Mortons Harbour on New World Island.⁽⁴¹⁾