From the California Gold Rush of 1849 through the energy boom of the 1970’s and the ensuing bust of the 1980s, booms and busts are part of the heritage of the mining industry. The history of much of the American West has been marked by these boom and bust cycles, with towns and businesses developing nearly overnight and prospering, followed by high unemployment, businesses going under and mines shutting down.
During every boom cycle, the mining companies proliferate and prosper and as they do, they document locations of precious metals, they drill, sample and mine. Then the bust comes, and the mining companies’ maps, documents and papers are packed away in boxes, often to be stored in someone’s basement and forgotten about. When the next boom comes, geologists, prospectors and mining engineers strive to find the old documents and make sense of the data stored in their pages.
Golden Predator Royalty & Development Corporation and Uranium One have undertaken a joint project to find and digitize old maps and other documents from the mid 1800’s through the mid 1980s and put them into an archive to facilitate the exploration of uranium, titanium, gold and other minerals.
“One of the big challenges of this project is scanning the old maps, “says Tim Szekely, of Uranium One. “Needless to say, when a mining company goes bust and the maps have been stored in a basement, sometimes for 100 years or more, they’re not in very good shape. Some maps that are on thermal paper have badly faded images; other maps have gotten damp and are water-marked and wrinkled. Some are very fragile, with the edges fraying away as they’re handled. We needed to find scanners that would handle these old documents and provide accurate digital files. “
Uranium One choose Contex large format scanners for the maps and Bell & Howell Truper scanners for the smaller documents, both provided by CAD / CAM Services. The Contex scanners were chosen because of their image quality, speed, ease of use and cost. Some of the more fragile documents are encased in plastic sleeves for protection during the scanning process. The Bell & Howell Trupers were chosen for their high throughput and the option to go to flatbed scanning mode when needed.
To date, more than fifty thousand maps, plus hundreds of thousands of office documents and correspondence have been scanned. Some of the documents include data that is of historical significance rather than exploration significance, such as documents from the Manhattan project, old telegrams, and old, hand-drawn maps, many from local old mines. There are also some hand drawn maps from around the world.
The scanned maps and documents are saved to PDF files and entered into the database. Uranium One uses the maps to find uranium and they make the database available to others who are looking for other minerals such as gold and titanium. These old maps tell explorers where to look and where not to look for minerals. The companies save money because they don’t have to drill holes to record background radiation to know what minerals are underground.
Additionally, when sites have previously been explored, today’s mining companies don’t have to duplicate efforts to learn that there’s nothing there or that the minerals are depleted. In some cases, the old maps point to sites where minerals were previously discovered, but not worked because it would have been too expensive to get to the minerals. However, it may be viable to work these old sites today with newer technology.
Scott Shuppert of CAD / CAM services says “One of the best things about my job is being able to provide Contex and Bell and Howell scanning equipment that not only helps companies become more efficient, but that also helps them preserve our history like Golden Predator and Uranium One are doing.”
Golden Predator is an industry leader in the drilling, sampling and mining of high grade ores and has access to extensive world-wide precious metals data and maps. Golden Predator maintains the maps and data in an extensive database that is used to focus efforts on promising exploration projects.
Uranium One Inc. is a uranium producing company that focuses on delivering results and strives for continuous improvement in uranium mining. Uranium One was quick to see the value of an electronic database archive that consolidates mining information that is available on old documents, much of which has been maintained in private files. is undertaking the digitizing of the old maps and documents to be included in the database that Golden Predator maintains.
CAD/CAM Services (CCS) has over 20 years experience in providing scanning equipment and cad conversion services. Based in Dallas (Celina), Texas USA, CCS is a small, woman-owned business and is Dunn & Bradstreet rated. CCS is one of only six (6) firms in the entire US that is qualified and certified for Department of Defense scanning and conversion work. Our staff includes P.E. engineers, architects and CAD technicians with Autodesk, Microstation and Catia certifications. For more information call toll free at 800-938-SCAN (7226).