Wheeler Kilns

Smelting of metal ores requires carbon and high temperature to produce molten metal. Traditional smelting used charcoal, a carbon product made from widely available wood. Unsurprisingly, therefore, charcoal was used widely for smelting in the early days of mining in the American West, because transportation was primitive while scrub vegetation and forests were abundant.

Because of this charcoal manufacture became widespread. Typically beehive-shaped kilns, or ovens, made of local stone were used. The kilns were charged with raw wood, which could include scrub and slash that otherwise were useless. The charge was allowed to smolder for about a month, after which the kiln was allowed to cool and then carefully opened. The finished charcoal could then be loaded. The kilns were located near the wood source, because it was much cheaper to ship the finished charcoal rather than the raw wood, particularly in an era of primitive freight transportation.

Originally called the Tecopa Charcoal Ovens, these kilns were built in 1875 and were probably active through the rest of the 1870s. The market for the charcoal was the smelters in Tecopa, California, over 40 miles away, as suggested by the original name.

The kilns were still standing as late as the 1990s. They certainly still stood in the early 1980s (as per the pictures). Vandalism, alas, may well account for some of their subsequent collapse, but a great deal may simply have resulted from earthquakes. It is known there have been a number of earthquakes in the magnitude 5-6 range in the vicinity in the last few decades.

Sources also report that a lime kiln was active here at one point. It is probably represented by the nondescript heaps of rubble off to the left (as viewed from the road) of the charcoal kilns. Lime (calcium oxide, CaO) is a critical ingredient in mortar, and is made by heating limestone. Limestone is largely calcium carbonate, CaCO3, which breaks down to CaO and carbon dioxide (CO2) when heated to high temperature. The bedrock in the area is limestone, so raw materials would have been abundant.