San Bernardino County Mining Awareness Week

Dinah O. Shumway

This week, May 2 through May 8, is the first San Bernardino County “Mining Awareness Week”.  The week was kicked off by a celebration at the County Building Tuesday afternoon at which County Supervisors Bill Postmus and Dennis Hansberger recognized the important role that mining plays in the economy of San Bernardino County.  Lots of proclamations were handed out, and 5 geology students from Cal State San Bernardino received scholarships funded by the mining community.

To those of us who work in the mining industry in San Bernardino County this is an important week.  The term “mining” has become one of the derision and scorn in our modern upscale society.  So to be recognized by the County’s civic leaders and elected officials as an industry that is important to our economy is certainly gratifying. 

Without mining there would be no roads, bridges, or buildings.  There would be no food, clothes, books, and computers.  There would be no energy, TV, radio, movies, play station or internet.  No water would be transported to your house, and no sewage would leave it.  All of us depend on mining to provide the raw materials that allow us to have the “things” that make our lives comfortable.

Here in the High Desert, where I live, mining is certainly visible, but every time I give a lecture to students, teachers, or just plain folks, I find that many people who live here are unaware of our local ongoing mining heritage.  Somehow, along the way, as we have all moved into our urban surroundings,  our society has lost its sense of connection with where “things” actually come from.  Think about it.  I’ll bet that most of you reading this think of mining as the 49er searching for gold with his trusty mule as his partner, in the gold fields of California.  If you attended elementary school in California you learned all about the gold rush in the fourth grade.

But mining is still an important and critical part of our society, providing the raw material, the basis “stuff” that is used to make the “things” that we use every day.

San Bernardino has more mines and produces more minerals than any other County in California.  Our county is the location of 4 cement plants, 2 of the most important calcium carbonate producers in the western US, the only high-grade lanthanide source in the world, the largest hectorite deposit in the world, the host to the only 2 iron mines in the State.   Our county also has many construction aggregate quarries, sand and gravel pits, and numerous decorative rock quarries.   Visit any modern mining operation in our county and you will see highly skilled workers who know where ‘things” come from.  Miners live in with us in our communities and are acutely aware of the impacts of mining, and work with communities to minimize those impacts.   And when the ore is gone (as it will be some day), the mine site is reclaimed to a use compatible with the surrounding area and the resources that our society needs are provided from a new ore deposit. 

A lot of things sure have changed since culture began over 4,000 years ago, but one thing has not changed: mining still provides the minerals that society needs: the basic “stuff” to make the “things” we use every day.  So tomorrow, when you wake up in your bed, in your house, and shower in you modern bathroom, and eat your breakfast from ceramic dishes, looking out your window at your garden, and hop into your car and drive down the road to your office building where you log on to your computer to check your first e-mails of the day,   think about the miners in San Bernardino County and give them a little nod for helping to make your modern life possible.  

If it can’t be grown, it HAS to be mined!