Webb City is in the southwestern corner of Missouri near the point where Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma intersect.

This area is known as the Tri-State Mining District, an area covering about 2,500 square miles across the three states. The major minerals are lead and zinc.

A large statue of a kneeling miner stands in front of the chamber of commerce in Webb City with the following inscription: “This statue dedicated in honor of the hardrock miner, his family and those who served the Webb City district mining industry during the past century (1876 – 1976).”

The chamber director gave me a booklet on the history of the Webb City Mining District by Norval M. Matthews. Some of the following information was taken from that booklet.

In the spring 1874, farmer John C. Webb was plowing his field in preparation for planting corn when his plow struck a boulder.

After doing some digging around the boulder, his mules were able to pull it out of the ground.

On closer examination, he realized the boulder contained almost pure lead ore.

Webb finished planting his corn, and after it was harvested that fall, tried his hand at mining the lead. He soon discovered he was not cut out for mining.

He then leased his land on a royalty basis to a professional mining company and set about laying out streets for a town and selling lots. The town of Webb City was incorporated Dec. 11, 1876.

Webb City soon became a prosperous mining town, and Webb was its first millionaire.

Before long there were several hundred mine shafts in the area. Horizontal tunnels branched out from these vertical shafts like spider webs, many of then interconnecting.

At one time it was said that you could travel from one town to another in this area by just following these underground tunnels.

The Joplin Museum Complex has a lot of the early day mining equipment on display, including an “ore can.”

This was a heavy steel bucket about three to three and a half feet tall and about 30 inches in diameter. It was used to hoist the mined rock up the shaft and out of the mine.

Shovelers would scoop up the blasted rock from the mine floor and dump it into these cans.

A shoveler was expected to fill 100 of these cans during his shift to earn his pay.

One can weighed about 1,200 pounds when fully loaded with rock. Care had to be taken when filling a can not to use too many big rocks.

This would result in several large empty spaces between the rocks causing a “windy,” a can too light to be safely hoisted.

Ore cans were placed on small rail carts on tracks running through the mine tunnels. In the early days mules were used to pull the ore cans through the mine to the bottom of the shaft for hoisting.

Once a mule was lowered into the mine it spent the rest of its life in the mine, never again seeing the light of day.

Supposedly, after being in the total darkness of the mine awhile, mules developed “night vision,” and if they were subjected to sunlight they would be blinded.

So, did these early miners get lead poisoning from working in these mines? The following bit of information is all I could find about the miners’ health.

“Accidents, cave-ins and disaster were taken for granted because they occurred so frequently. A hospital provided operating space for the removal of limbs maimed or broken in the mines. Years later a tuberculosis hospital was built north of the city to provide relief for those who had contracted the dread miner’s consumption from breathing rock dust deep in the mines.”

According to the U.S. Geological Service, this area is the fourth largest producer of lead in the United States, and the No. 1 producer of zinc. Total ore production is estimated at nearly 12 million tons of zinc and 2.9 million tons of lead.

I was told that by taking one of the back roads on the northwest side of Joplin I could see the remains of some of these mines.

Several areas here, each covering five to fifteen acres or more, are covered with chat piles and “tailings” left from the old mining operations.

These look like a light grey ash and give the appearance of a “moonscape.”

Several years have passed since the mines operated, but nothing grows in these areas.

The chat piles and tailings sites around Joplin, Mo., in Jasper County are part of the Oronogo-Duenweg Mining Belt Superfund Site.

These sites are highly contaminated with hazardous substances, including lead, zinc, cadmium, copper and selenium. Because of the toxicity of these contaminates the sites have been put on the National Priorities List. Cleanups have been completed for some of the sites while others are in the cleanup process.

Back at Webb City, just a mile down the road from the miner’s statue is another large statue.

This is a statue of hands clasped in prayer atop an atoll by the road. The statue is 32 feet tall and weighs 110 tons.

Carved into a concrete wall near the base of the statue are the words: “Hands In Prayer, World In Peace.”



John Watson is a Cleburne resident who can be reached at texastraveler@sbcglobal.net.