Gamble across the Rio Grande: Industrial Archaeology of the Aerial Ore Tramway in the Big Bend

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the 1900s a group of adventurous entrepreneurs resumed mining activities that had been abandoned a decade prior in the Big Bend region. The idea this time was to utilize new mining technologies. Overcoming long distances, rugged terrain, and international and cultural borders, an expensive and new mineral transport system known as an aerial ore tramway, which spanned six miles across the U.S./Mexico border, was installed. The installation of the aerial tramway and its towers and cables became central to the developmental boom in the Rio Grande/Río Bravo region. It brought a decade of transformations to the landscape including the mobilization of a new workforce, new communities, economic investment, and the bridging of the Sierra del Carmen of Mexico with the Terminal Valley of the United States. However, only a few years after the second life of mining in the Big Bend region, it fell into oblivion again. Today, the wobbly towers of the aerial tramway stand in what is now Big Bend National Park as a reminder of the industrial landscape that once thrived in this strikingly tough region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32558