by Abby Palmer
STAFF WRITER
It's in his blood. His great-grandfather, grandfather and father all worked in them before him. "It" just happens to be Tooele County mines, and his name is John Austin Skinner.
Skinner, who was raised in Ophir, followed in the footsteps of his great-grandfather George Davey, grandfather James Young, and father Vince Young, by taking a job working in the county's mines when he graduated from Tooele High School in 1964.
"They wouldn't let me in the mine when I first started working because I wasn't 18," he said. "So to begin with I was grooving pipe to use in the mine. Then when I turned 18, I became a miner."
But it wasn't until two years later, when he came across some of his grandmother's photos of area mines, that he decided to begin a lifelong quest of accumulating all the information he could about them.
"I started going into the University of Utah every winter and looking at the microfilm," he said. "I started with dates in the 1850s and now I'm to the early 1900s."
Not only has he acquired a great deal of information on the mines in Tooele County, he has also been inside most of them.
On Tuesday night, Skinner spoke to attendees of the Tooele County Historical Society meeting about the Sunshine Mine and town, which is located at the southern end of the Oquirrhs.
"When I was young, Sunshine was one of my favorite places to go," he said. "It was quiet and peaceful -- just an interesting place."
Skinner said Sunshine was discovered in 1894. Two years later, it had grown to a full-fledged town of about 400 people, but by 1910 it became a ghost town.
The town had its ups and downs, Skinner said. For example, there was a fire at the hotel that everyone thought would burn the whole town down, but the townspeople were able to contain it.
One of the ups was the first baby born in Sunshine on Sept. 12, 1896.
"Because it was the first baby, the town gave the parents a lot to build themselves a house," Skinner said.
He said there was one restaurant in Sunshine.
"Chinaman Charlie's was on Main Street," he said. "He had an opium den in the back of the restaurant."
Like all the mines in the county, Sunshine intrigues him. Although he spoke about the Sunshine Mine, he said his favorite mine is Mono in Jacob City.
Skinner said from 1873 to 1874, Matt Gisborn, the owner of Mono Mine, built a toll road from Stockton to Jacob City and fared very well, bringing in $300,000 a month.
Skinner laughed as he told a story about a newspaper correspondent who came from back East. The correspondent found Gisborn in an old shack, drinking whiskey and smoking a cigar. The correspondent told Gisborn that he could be living it up in New York and asked Gisborn why he wasn't doing that.
"Gisborn looked at the correspondent and said 'All I need is my whiskey and my cigar and I'm happy,'" Skinner said.
While Skinner is known for being well-versed in Tooele County mines, he is also known as being somewhat of a local hero when he helped find a 10-year-old boy who became lost in the Hidden Treasure Mine, which is up Dry Canyon and below the Mono Mine, in 1989.
Skinner's grandfather first took him into the Hidden Treasure Mine when he was about 10 years old and has been in it many times after, so he has extensive knowledge of the area.
Skinner had been conducting some research in Montana, when upon arriving home his wife said deputies were looking for maps of the Hidden Treasure Mine to help find a lost boy. When he went to the courthouse to show the deputies some maps, they had already found some, so he volunteered to help find the boy.
"Finally on Wednesday they let me into the mine," he said. "The boy had been in there for five days with no water and no food."
Skinner went in with Gary Christensen and Ray Guymun, who were with the Utah Power and Light rescue team.
"I had some weird feelings about where he was," Skinner said. "And there in the last place we looked, we found him. We were in and out in 25 minutes."
Skinner said his love for Tooele County history partly came from his parents, who always encouraged him to continue learning. And that desire to keep learning has given him the reputation of being an expert on mines.
Jay Delamare, past president of the Tooele County Historical Society, said, "He's the guru of Tooele County on mining."
apalmer@tooeletranscript.com