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The Bat Cave guano mine, located in the western Grand Canyon of Arizona at river mile 266, above Lake Mead, was an unusual, expensive and noteworthy mining operation. The natural cave was a bat habitat and contained an accumulation of guano. ==Mining== The cave was apparently discovered in the 1930s by a passing boater. Several unsuccessful early attempts were made to mine the nitrogen-rich guano deposit within the cave for fertilizer. The U.S. Guano Corporation bought the property around 1957. Based on a reputable mining engineer's estimate that the cave contained 100,000 tons of guano, the company constructed an elaborate plant to extract the guano. A small airstrip was built on a nearby sandbar in the Colorado River, and all supplies and machinery needed were then flown in. An aerial tramway was built from the mine to Guano Point on the South Rim, with the cable headhouse built on land leased from the Hualapai tribe. The cableway crossed the river, with a main span of , and a vertical lift of . About of 1.5 inch (38 mm) steel cable were used, to support and pull a cable car large enough to transport of guano. The same car was used to transport the miners to and from work. The guano was mined using a large industrial "vacuum-cleaner" with ten-inch hoses. From the cablehead, the guano was hauled by truck to Kingman, Arizona and packaged for retail sale. During construction of the cableway, which took 14 months, the first of several mishaps occurred. When first tensioning the main cable, a clutch-lever broke, dropping of cable into the canyon. A new cable was ordered and strung, and mining began. The pull-cable wore out after a few months use and had to be replaced, bringing the company's total investment up to $US 3,500,000. The mining engineer's estimate of the potential size of the guano deposit proved wildly optimistic: the cave contained only about 1,000 tons of minable guano, not the 100,000 tons of the engineer's estimate. Most of the cave was filled with valueless limestone rubble. In 1959, the cableway was used for the film Edge of Eternity, with the climax of the film involving a fight on a U.S. Guano cable car suspended above the Grand Canyon. Mining ceased in early 1960. Guano sold for about $100 a ton then,〔 (''High Wire'' ), construction of the tramway, by a former employee of the contractor. He notes that the ironworkers named their construction camp "Batchit, Arizona".〕 so this was not a profitable venture. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bat Cave mine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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