Here’s one description, partly written by an inmate:“Archey, a prisioner leased into Comer’s Eureka mines, wrote that the convicts lived in a windowless log stockade, their quarters “filled with filth and vermin”. Gunpowder cans were used to hold human waste that periodically “would fill up and runover on bed” where some prisoners were shackled in place at night. (…)“Every night some one of us were carried out to our last resting, the grave. Day after day we looked Death in the face & was afraid to speak.” Archey wrote. (…) “Fate seems to curse a convict. Death seems to summon us hence.” Indeed, between 1878 and 1880, twenty-five prisoners died at the Eureka mines, most dumped unceremoniously into shallow earthen pits on the edge of the mine site." (pp. 70-71).There’s lot more, but that’s enough to give you a taste. I bet most people don’t know about this part of American history, and some probably don’t want to know.
Here’s one description, partly written by an inmate:“Archey, a prisioner leased into Comer’s Eureka mines, wrote that the convicts lived in a windowless log stockade, their quarters “filled with filth and vermin”. Gunpowder cans were used to hold human waste that periodically “would fill up and runover on bed” where some prisoners were shackled in place at night. (…)“Every night some one of us were carried out to our last resting, the grave. Day after day we looked Death in the face & was afraid to speak.” Archey wrote. (…) “Fate seems to curse a convict. Death seems to summon us hence.” Indeed, between 1878 and 1880, twenty-five prisoners died at the Eureka mines, most dumped unceremoniously into shallow earthen pits on the edge of the mine site." (pp. 70-71).There’s lot more, but that’s enough to give you a taste. I bet most people don’t know about this part of American history, and some probably don’t want to know.