Meade County Silica Mines

By Nancy Ohnick

All my life I have heard about the Silica Mines around Meade, but very little has been written about this industry that disappeared from our landscape decades ago. I recently had to get a copy of my birth certificate and although I’ve looked at it many times, suddenly I noticed that it listed my father’s occupation as “silica worker.” Well… I thought if I wanted to know about silica mines first hand I would just go to the source. Robert Feldman is my dad. “Bob” as he is better known around Meade is approaching eight-three years old and has an excellent memory. He protested at first… then the flood gates opened and all kinds of information poured out of him.

I acquired a booklet from the Kansas Geological Survey that explained that what was commonly known as "silica" was actually volcanic ash... I quote:

Just what is volcanic ash? Kansas volcanic ash is a glass, not a crystalline material. It differs form other volcanic deposits such as pumice, obsidian, scoria and perlite (consolidated materials) in that it consists of shards of finely divided material that is unconsolidated or only slightly consolidated. The shards are white to gray but whiten further in the bloating process. Unfortunately, volcanic ash is often called by other names. It is widely termed "pumicite" and locally in Kansas it is even referred to as "silica sand" or "silica," but technically these names are incorrect. STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF KANSAS, BULLETIN 157, PART 3

So, it's not technically "silica" but as this was the name everyone in the region used to describe the mines so we are going to use it also.

FROM SULIVANS HISTORY OF MEADE COUNTY: 1916

Immense deposits of silica exist, which is just commencing to be of commercial importance.

Ira McSherry, from his farm about three miles south of Meade, is now filling a contract with James H. Rhodes & Co., Chicago, manufacturers of industrial chemicals, whereby he furnishes them a stated quantity of silica per year for five years. The price realized by Mr. McSherry is $2 per ton, delivered at Meade.

The Cudahy Packing Co. owns large deposits of this mineral, and in the year 1915 built a railroad from their mines a few miles north of Meade, connecting with the C. R. I. & P. at Fowler, for the purpose of transporting the product of these mines.

The Puck Soap Company owns silica beds just west of Meade, and other deposits are found in various parts of the county.

My interview with Bob Feldman

The Cudahy Mine

 “The Cudahy Plant was north of Meade…. This was a huge plant… they had houses out there for their workers to live in… Lawrence and Henry Bohling worked out there. Willard Mohler worked out there. Henry Bohling lived out there…. my Aunt Dora died out there in one of those houses.” 

Cudahy, a meat packing plant in Chicago, sacked the silica from their Meade County mine for soaking up blood on the kill floor. They also had a subsidiary plant that manufactured cleaning products that utilized the silica. This was the better-known silica operation in our county.  

Bob remembered the man who managed the plant was a Mr. Rothe, and that he had two children a boy and a girl. A quick check with our Meade High School Alumni database found June Rothe who graduated in 1935, and Charles Rothe who graduated in 1939. The Rothe’s, he said, had a bigger house at the Cudahy plant. The girl, June, was beautiful and he thinks she became an airline stewardess and later became famous as a model advertising cold cream in magazines.  

Bob thinks the Cudahy mine would have closed around 1950. He said by this time it was down to just a few workers. 

The houses from the mine were moved to other locations when the plant closed. Of the ones Bob remembers, one is at 418 North Baltimore in Meade… another is at 600 N. Baltimore. They were small two-bedroom houses, but very well built, and probably all just alike. Rod and Martha Ohnick recently bought a country home that was one of these houses… I always referred to this as the DeWitt place… W.P. (Bill) and Zada (DeWitt) Lemaster would have lived there in the mid 1940’s and moved this house onto their place. (This is Leroy Lemaster’s parents.) 

The Hantla Mines 

The Hantla Silica Mine is where Bob worked. This operation was managed by Albert Hantla, but at the time Bob worked there it was operated by his son-in-law, Elbert Harris. (see more about this family on page 95 of the 1885 Meade County Historical Society book)

“They had a mine south of town, one west northwest of town and one north of town. I worked at the one west of town and the one north of town. The one north of town was north of the Cudahy plant.. that’s where I worked last.” Bob recalled a man by the name of Stub Davis owned the land at the north site, and Rosco Smith owned the land at the west site. 

Mr. Hantla must have taken over operation of the two mines previously operated by Ira McSherry and the Puck Soap Company mentioned in Sullivan’s history.  

Bob said he ran a shovel for awhile. This was a strip mining operation. First they had to remove a lot of dirt with dynamite. When it came out of the ground it was in chunks and moist. This raw material was trucked to a “plant” in Meade which Bob described as an old tin shed. The plant was just west of the Coop Elevator, on the south side of the railroad where they had a spur line to the plant. This material had to be dried, then ground into a fine powder. Then they would sack it and load it on a railcar.  

“They would run it through this dryer that had big ol’ cylinders… it had gas flames shooting through it… oh it got HOT! It was powered by an old Allis Chalmers tractor.  First it would go into kind of a hammer grinder.. then it would go into the dryer… when it came out of that dryer it was a fine powder… it would just run like water.”

“Two guys would work the sacking… a sacker would weigh it and when it weighed enough another guy would stack it on a cart. The sacks were paper like a cement sack… they were sealed except for a slot that went on the machine… the sacker would thread the sack onto a spout and when it was full, it sealed itself when the sack was pulled off.” 

When asked about the safety of working around that fine powder Bob said, “We just breathed that stuff, we didn’t know what harm it was doing to us… the old hands… most of them died of lung cancer.” 

Bob didn’t know where the Hantla mine sold the silica, but he thought toward the last they shipped it to an optical company in Wichita. The Hantla operation went out in the late 1940’s and the plant was sold and moved to Gate OK. 

“They paid pretty good wages, I know when I worked there I was getting $1.00 an hour and that was more than the common laborer was getting… you could buy anything with a dollar back then.” The Hantla mine hired five workers including the foreman, Elbert Harris. Bob remembers working with Pete McPheter for a time. 

I am at present undergoing the task of finding the legal descriptions for these mines so that I can pinpoint them on a map. Elmer Friesen has promised to take me to the one south of Meade… it will be interesting if Ira McSherry shows up as the landowner in the courthouse records…. and if Cudahy actually owned the land their mine was on. So... this story is a work in progress. I will add photos when I get them and a map of where they were located. 

Courtesy of Brian Hantla

The notation on the back of the photo: "Midco Product
Mine. Shovel twelve."

Courtesy of Brian Hantla

Courtesy of Brian Hantla

Access a PDF file here with captions that explain the functions of these buildings.

Left to right front: Albert, Willis (my grandfather); John, Clarence, and Jesse Hantla

Back left to right: Ethel, Ernest, Paul and Maggie Hantla

Courtesy of Brian Hantla

Click here to access a copy of a patent owned by Albert Hantla for a volcanic ash drier he invented in 1934.

A Note from Marvin Woltje

Received this addition from Marvin Woltje after I published the above story:

I read with interest your story about the silica mine north of Meade. My father Ted Woltje worked there for many years, from the 1920's until it closed in the 1950's. He did have one respite from there for a few years.

George Clapper was the superintendent after Rothe. He had two children, Leon and Alice Faye. Alice Faye was a little younger than I, I graduated from Meade in 1959. His wife Georgia worked at Bisbee's dime store after George's death. He fell to his death at the mine in the 50's. The silica was used to make Old Dutch Cleanser which was made by Cudahy. A product like the bathroom cleansers we use today. It was also used as ballast in ships during WWII and it was a wartime industry and I believe they worked around the clock at that time at least for a period. The finished product was shipped in hopper cars by rail. On occasion, the product was bagged and shipped by boxcar. The railroad spur came out of Fowler.

Cudahy sold the plant and all to Purex Corp in LA in the 50's and they closed it. Many other people lived out there including Dom Gillen. Ben Lampe and Fred Frank families moved to Dodge City and worked for Fairmont Milk.  When the plant closed only my father and Joe Marcus from Dodge City were working there. I can't remember when it closed but I was in high school so it had to be 55 or so. I have some pictures somewhere if I can find them although they are not good ones.

A Note from Pat Smith

I just now read your blog about the silica mines and have a little input. My granddad, Earl Rexford, worked for the Boraxo Soap Company in 1960/61 tearing out all the equipment at the Cudahy plant and disposing of it. All the trucks, wagons, tractors, plant equipment, and an old steam shovel. The houses, garages, and out buildings were sold (for near nothing) and moved. Two of these out buildings ended up at Charles Cook farm. The steam shovel was bought by Jenkenson bros. but after months of trying to get it going they gave up and sold it for scrap.

The railroad tracks were bought by Gillette Razor for razor blades. I helped tear everything out and we would haul most to grandpa's back yard and wait for bidder to pick up. There is still a lot of fire brick there (Rod Blehm residence). I remember hauling in at last count 14,000 of them.

Just east of the plant and south of the tracks was the corrals where they kept horses and mules for pulling the wagons. When we finished there were still several horse drawn wagons, all the harnesses, and blacksmithing equipment still there, NO ONE WANTED IT THEN! I'd like to know what happened to it.

My best memory of this era is when my grandpa and I were lowering a 32HP electric motor down from the crows nest it was sitting on. The rafter we had block and tackle tied to broke and the whole thing came down, The block and tackle hit me in the back, (I didn't know what happened, it was explained to me later) All I remember is waking up in the back of a 50 Chevy pick up going 60 to nothing for the Meade Hospital. I slammed on the cab and told grandpa to slow down. Went home, rested up and after a glass of ice water, went back to work. I have more but finger locked up.  Pat Smith

(Editors note: a Google search revealed that the US Borax's consumer division was acquired by The Dial Corporation in 1989. They still manufacture Boraxo hand soap and 20-Mule Team Borax laundry product.)

A phone call from Irvin "Beefy" Marrs

Irvin has lots of memories of living just three miles or so east of the Cudahy mine. The rail track ran by his Granddad's place (Frank Marrs) and they watched the loads of silica rolling towards Fowler (eight to ten cars a week as he remembers). Cudahy contracted with Frank to furnish water for the train engine... they dug a hole by their artesian well and pumped the water to the engine.... "quite a sight in the 30's for two ten and twelve-year-old boys." Irvin remembers there was a hotel at the mine (I hadn't heard this before) he said it burned down in the 1920's sometime. Some of the family names he remembers from the mine workers were Moler, Petifish, and Stranton.. kids that went to school with him in Fowler. "We never did go to the mines as I remember Mom always told us it was too dangerous... that it could cave in on you. I did know there were other mines around but never went to them." Thanks for the memories, Irvin... if you come up with anything else... let us know!

A Trip to the Railroad Right-of-Way Mine  by Nancy Ohnick

(Several people since I posted this have assured me this was not a mine.. but they can't explain why it is there... Brian Hantla became interested in this story and has visited this site and agrees that it was not a mine, but I'm leaving it for now because we did retrieve some silica from it, and it must be there for a reason. Kids Jay's age will remember this as "the silica mine" so it may bring back fond childhood memories for them. Maybe someone will read this and fill in the blanks.) My Dad said that the railroad mixed silica with concrete to build their bridges.... perhaps the railroad company mined this for their own use.

My son, Jay Dorsey, came to visit in early June, 2007, and I was telling him about this story on the Old Meade County silica mines.  He told me he had fond memories of playing in the old mine west of town when he was a kid, and that he would love to take me there. So we loaded up and went out there on a sunny afternoon. It turns out that it is just a short ways from town. We drove north from 54 on the dirt road just west of Dr. Feldmeyer's house and parked at the railroad track and walked west on the tracks to the mine.

The mine is just a big gully now... overgrown in the bottom with dried weeds, but it's still there and it's plain to see how the mine worked. I could see in my mind's eye the old trucks backed in there an being loaded with the white earth. We took a jar and Jay "mined" a little silica for me to bring home.  Nancy Ohnick

Now the mine is just a big gully overgrown with weeds. The shot above is from the bottom looking west. The shot at right is from the top at the west end of the mine looking east.. you can see Meade off in the distance

Jay scraped a little silica from a vein along the wall of the mine into a jar. You can see here how Mother Nature placed the mineral in the ground.

When we drove back to town we took the trail east from where we parked and came into town just south of the elevators. (I later took my Dad by there and he pointed out the old foundations of the plant still standing just south of the tracks and west of the Coop elevator.) All in all it was a fun excursion chasing down a little Meade County history. 

A Note from Brian Hantla

While I was home in Meade this past week, my brother Troy and I found the North and South “Hantla” mines. Maps attached and photos. I also have photos from my cousin, Dorothy Hoover (Albert Hantla’s granddaughter) of the North mine in 1938 and of the processing plant in Meade. She gave me general directions to the mines and stated that her dad never worked a mine west of town. Albert Hantla never owned the mines; he was just the manager for the Midland Company.

I walked to the area you indicated west of town; if could have been excavated for silica, but is very small compared to the South and even the North mine. It appears they may have used the dirt originally for fill to level out the tracks and came upon the deposit. It would not have taken them long to cut that area out. I think its just a vein, and not a true long term mining project.

An additional note FYI. I talked to a man who is an oil field geologist. He knows Meade County very well and says that Meade County has literally hundreds of silica deposits. A lot of them just surface deposits but several veins that run for miles. South of Meade from “P” Road (Lovers Lane) to “S” road there are huge deposits of silica. Same goes for North of Meade. Another area of large deposits is around Satana, Kansas; where oddly enough, Albert Hantla also managed that mine.

A BIG THANKS to Brian and Troy Hantla for these photos!

Nancy Ohnick

On a recent sunny October morning, Pat Smith picked me up and we drove out to the old Cudahy Silica Mine. He wanted to take another look since it had been years since he saw it... I was seeing it for the first time.

This mine is located just to the south of the intersection of Highway K23 and 98 north of Meade... on the east side of 23. Below are the photos I took of what is left of the Cudahy operation.

Right: Abandoned parts of the drying equipment.

Right: A good shot of a vein of silica and how deep they were at this mine.

Left Below: Pat found a dump site where used bricks from the dryers were dumped.

Right: A big pile of old parts from the scales used to weigh the silica serves as a reminder of industry past in Old Meade County.

Meade Kansas

August 6, 1926

Courtesy of the Meade County Historical Society