Crowder Mountain Talc Mine, Gaston County, North Carolina

April 2021

Gate Type: BASIC

We may have said it before, but North Carolina doesn’t have a lot of caves, at least not the solutional type that most people think of. Underground habitats are rare, so even relatively short abandoned mines are important for bats. We were able to pull off this project in a beautiful state park in a single day, despite having to hand carry everything up hill a very long distance. But the employees of the park and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Division were incredible! There are not a lot of photos because I didn’t have much time, since it was a small gate and we were working fast to get it done in one day. All photos © Jim Kennedy.

The graffiti at the mine entrance tells us that there is some illegal entry going on, and that someone else is a Tolkien fan.
As is typical for this type of entrance, we laid an expanded metal skirt to keep trespassers from digging under, then placed our sill and the two vertical columns.
We have all the bar hangers in place, and a couple of horizontal bars. Amber now welds stiffeners in another bar, while a fourth awaits stiffeners.
The gate is nearly finished, and the metal haulers take a well-deserved rest break.
We often use short pieces of scrap steel as a slate, keeping track of the dimensions of each piece needed.
Installation of the torsion bars on the outside of the hangers means that we are nearly done.
The tired but happy crew and the finished gate.
We’ll leave you with this short video clip to give you some idea of what our work is like.