Throughout Park City, street names, buildings, and ski runs honor mining owners and tycoons. This Ol’ Miner Statue instead honors the thousands of often unnamed miners who worked Park City’s mines for 120 years, from immigrants who arrived in the 1860s to the family miners who helped close the Ontario Mine in 1982.
Mining was grueling and dangerous. Until 1896, miners worked ten hours a day, six days a week, with only two holidays a year. The mines were wet, and fatal accidents were common. At historic Glenwood Cemetery, many gravestones mark men who died from mining. In 1902, a powder magazine explosion at what is now Deer Valley killed 34 miners in a single disaster
Here in front of you, beneath the Silver King Mine and near the old ore tramway relics, stands a sculpture of lifelong resident Rich Martinez, one of Park City’s “last miners.”
Clark Martinez is Rich’s son and the expert contractor who has worked with the Friends group to restore the historic mining structures.
You know this statue represents all the miners that ever worked in the Park City mines.
His generation was the last generation to spend their whole career working underground in the Park City mines.
Rich Martinez came from a family of miners, and his son Clark followed him underground after high school. A longtime Park City resident, Rich also owned the former Cozy Tavern, served 16 years on the City Council, and helped install some of the town’s first chairlifts. He died in 2017. His bronze statue is based on a 1953 mucking and drilling contest photo shown on the nearby plaque.
Yeah, so that’s my father there. That’s the drilling and mucking contest. You can’t see the mucking machine, but that’s definitely the same drill.
He’s holding a rock drill, which is used to drill holes into the rock surface for inserting dynamite or to split rock.
And they’d time each other, and whoever had the fastest time drilling in two feet, that’s who would win.
This mucking and drilling competition has been a yearly tradition during Park City’s Miners’ Day – Labor Day for the rest of us – for well over a century. Mucking is scooping up all the excess mud and debris in the mines resulting from drilling and blasting. Being the town steward, Rich Martinez organized that contest for over 20 years during his lifetime. Clark likes to boast that his dad probably won 30 of them.
Clark Martinez Lectures: Saving Park City’s Mining Structures