The US Bureau of Mines produced a 90 minutes film in the early 1920 entitled "The Story of Asbestos." It focused on the Johns-Manville mines and subsequent processing facilities. Luckily, the film contains 11 minutes and 40 seconds of Chrysotile-related footage. Ricardo Rico graciously processed the 3.2 gig file to extract the 11:40 clip of Chrysotile. You can click on the player or, better yet, use the Vimeo link for a much higher quality rendition. A dozen screen clips from the film are included below.
https://vimeo.com/870293403
Most of the work sorting high grade asbestos ore was done by hand. It was called "cobbing".
While most all major mines elsewhere in America were using the latest and greatest technology, chrysotile mining still utilized burros to carry ore between the mine and the local processing mill.
Each burro generally carried two 100 pound bags of ore.
Herding burros was part of the daily mine activities.
The film includes some footage of the mill at Chrysotile.
The presence of ore cars and multiple tracks in the film indicates burros weren't the only means of conveyance.
Of course, remnants of this and other tailings dumps are still visible both in Chrysotile and throughout the Gila County asbestos mining districts.
Burros were used for other tasks, too.
The film includes some nice footage of early truck usage to transport supplies to Chrysotile.
Here is the school for children of Mexican and Indian workers.
This is the company store.
Here the burros are used for hauling sand. There were quite a few buildings in Old Chrysotile.
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