Brick & mortar: P&Q’s partnership

Pit & Quarry partners with the National Mining Hall of Fame & Museum
in Colorado to create a national aggregates exhibit.

The National Mining Hall of Fame & Museum in Leadville, Colo., gives guests the opportunity to dig through mining culture and history.

In one room, a walkthrough hard rock mine exhibit makes guests feel like they are visiting an underground operation, featuring the sights and sounds of a hard rock mine. In another room, guests can get the feel for what prospecting was like decades ago in Colorado. There’s even an exhibit NASA contributed that showcases what the future of mining could be like on other planetary bodies.

The museum features an exhibit on just about every aspect of mining. Possibly the only aspect missing from the museum to date: aggregates.

Yet that will soon change. The National Mining Hall of Fame & Museum (NMHFM) partnered with Pit & Quarry to incorporate Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame inductees and a related exhibit dedicated to aggregates.

“When [Pit & Quarry Publisher] Rob Fulop called us a couple years back about this, we realized we weren’t quite looking at the museum in the way we needed to look at it,” says Frank McAllister, chairman of the board for NMHFM. “When considering who’s in the mining industry, you really need to look at mining as broadly as you can.”

Stephen Whittington, executive director for NMHFM, says the museum has 25,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space to honor all types of mining, including mineral mining, prospecting and transportation of minerals. He says the museum gets about 20,000 visitors per year. NMHFM honors 232 mining industry leaders. The museum inducted Dr. Frank Aplan, T.S. Ary, Ralph Bailey, John Campbell Greenway and Edward Steidle to the museum this year.

When Pit & Quarry approached the museum with the suggestion of adding an aggregates exhibit, Whittington realized one could bring in more visitors.

“A lot of people who read the magazine are located in the Midwest or East,” Whittington says. “But at the museum, we’ve made a lot more inroads in the West. This is a great opportunity to expand our presence to another part of the country and to another segment of mining.”

Fulop says the partnership gives the magazine a tangible place to honor its hall of fame inductees.

“Without the partnership, the only place we had to showcase our inductees was here in our office in Cleveland, Ohio,” Fulop says. “But if we showcased our inductees here, no one in the industry would have been able to see their plaques. Partnering with NMHFM means we have a brick-and-mortar place to showcase our hall of famers.”

Bernie Grove, a 2014 Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame inductee of M.J. Grove Lime Co., says he feels honored that he’ll be included in NMHFM’s exhibits. Grove appreciates that more people from the aggregates industry will be represented in the museum.

“The [National] Mining Hall of Fame & Museum is almost legendary to anyone in the mining business,” Grove says. “I recently did a tour of it and got to see all the legends in there from the mining industry. It’s really a great place to go.”

2015 inductees to the National Mining Hall of Fame & Museum

The National Mining Hall of Fame & Museum (NMHFM) inducted five men to the museum’s hall of fame for 2015: Dr. Frank Aplan, T.S. Ary, Ralph Bailey, John Campbell Greenway and Edward Steidle. Inductees were selected by NMHFM’s board of governors for being visionaries, leaders, educators and ambassadors in the mining industry.

Aplan: An authority on flotation, he is best known for his studies of the wetting of solids and their control through absorption of surfactant films. Recognized for his studies of the processes involved in the preparation of coal and mineral ores, he also studied the atomic defects on properties and the behavior of solid-liquid interfaces.

Ary: An authority on mineral policy, he served on the U.S. State Department Task Force to the United National Law of the Sea Convention and on the Mineral Advisory Committee to the Department of Commerce. According to the museum, he was a leader in mineral exploration and a supporter of environmental, sustainable mineral policies.

Bailey: An advocate for the safety and improvement of mines, he implemented the first long wall system to operate in eastern bituminous coal. He also implemented a program to improve the health and safety of underground and surface miners.

Greenway: Led the development of the Western Mesabi Iron Ore Range in Minnesota and helped develop and patent the technology for leaching copper ores and electro winning the leached solutions.

Steidle: He created Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and became its dean. While he served as dean, he taught and shared his philosophy on mineral education and conservation.

To date, NMHFM has honored 232 individuals for their contributions to all aspects of mining.

NMHFM awarded the Powell River Project Research and Education Center with the Prazen Living Legend of Mining Award for its partnership with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the Appalachian coal mining industry this year.

All 2015 inductees and the Prazen award winner will be honored at the 28th annual induction ceremony Oct. 23 in Pittsburgh at the Omni William Penn Hotel ballroom.