Belmont Stopes, The

DESCRIPTION: "To all you rustlin' miners Who for a job have hopes, Just hear this little story Of life in the Belmont Stopes." The gas is heavy. The work is hard. Death is common. The singer hopes never again to suffer as much as he did in the Belmont Stopes
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1910 (June 9, 1910 [Denver] "Miner's Magazine," according to Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest)
KEYWORDS: mining hardtimes warning death technology
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, p. 149, "The Belmont Stopes" (1 text)
NOTES [59 words]: Yes, that's "Stopes," not "Slopes." A stope is "an excavation in a mine working or quarry in the form of a step or notch," so it would be a term better known to miners than the rest of us.
It looks as if the writer of this was somewhat educated, since he refers to Dante and to Pluto (the god, not the dwarf planet, which had not been discovered in 1910).
Last updated in version 6.6
File: LDC149

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