Thirteen Mounted Photographs of the Tesla Coal Mines and Carnegie, California
[San Francisco]: G.E. Gould, Palace Car; J.W. Stateler, (n. d.), circa 1895. Ten approx. 6-1/2 x 8-1/4 inch b&w photographs on approx. 9 x 11 inch heavy cardstock mounts; one 4-1/2 x 11-1/2 inch b&w photo on a 7 x 13-3/4 inch mount; one 3-1/2 x 12-1/4 inch b&w photo on 6-1/2 x 14-3/4 inch mount; one 3-1/2 x 12-1/4 inch cyanotype on 6-1/2 x 14-3/4 inch mount. Edgewear with small loss to some corners of panorama mounts; one panorama quite toned; minor occasional wear to photo edges. Good to Very Good overall.
A rare collection of photographs of the Tesla Coal Mines and neighboring company town of Carnegie, showing group portraits of the miners (which include children, and men of Asian and African American descent) as well as views of the mine shafts, surrounding buildings, etc. Six of the photographs are signed either in the plate or in blind on the mount by G.E. Gould, who captioned two in the plate as being Tesla Coal Mines and one as Carnegie; two photographs are blindstamped by J.W. Stateler, another San Francisco-based photographer; and the remainder are unsigned and uncaptioned. As they came to us together and by all appearances look to share the same subject matter, we assume they are all of Tesla Coal Mines and Carnegie.
John Treadwell, a millionaire who made his fortune in gold mining, opened Tesla Coal Mines in 1890, twelve miles outside Livermore, California. A company town quickly sprang up around the mines, which Treadwell formally named Tesla in 1897, after inventor Nikola Tesla, because he initially wanted to build a coal-burning power plant there (a plan which never materialized). A second, smaller company town was also established four miles away, named Carnegie after the steel magnate.
Between 1890 and 1900, Tesla Coal Mines produced over 80,000 tons of coal, making it the leading coal producer in California. Although Treadwell opted to nix his power plant idea, for fear of competition from hydroelectric power plants, he instead built the first successful coal briquetting plant in the U.S., and coal briquets soon became a popular household heating and cooking fuel. However, a 1905 fire destroyed the plant, eventually forcing the mines to shut down permanently in 1911. The towns of Tesla and Carnegie became ghost towns and were both razed in later years, and are now part of the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreational Area. (see teslacoalmines.org)
We note some holdings of photographs of Tesla Coal Mines in OAC, at UC Davis and UC Berkeley.
