St. Joe Smelter - Herculaneum, MO - Lead Line Mines And Concentrate - To MoP - Getting The Lead Out

During the Frisco era, St. Joe Lead was the leading producer of lead concentrate in the Viburnum Trend of Missouri.

All of their concentrate moved via Frisco's Lead Line north to Cuba and then St Louis, Missouri. The lead concentrate moved in standard gondolas which were interchanged to MoPac at Crystal City, and then moved north to the smelter.

The ultimate destination was the St. Joe smelter located at Herculaneum, Missouri, along the MoPac branch which ran south from Riverside to a connection with Frisco at Crystal City. The Herculaneum smelter was started up in 1892 and expanded many times since then to become the largest lead smelter in the U.S., and second largest in the world.

While working for U.S. Bureau of Mines in Rolla, I had the opportunity to visit many of Missouri's mines and smelters. I rarely was able to bring a camera, and frankly the interiors of mines, mills, and smelters were dark and difficult to photograph.

On this particular day in August 1989 I brought my cheap camera with me and shot several photos in outside areas of the smelter. While this smelter is not located on the Frisco, I thought it may interest a few folks to see where all that lead concentrate in Frisco gondolas actually ended up.

In the photo below, I am standing on the north side of the rotary car dumper at the Herculaneum smelter, looking at the incline which leads into the dumper. This track continued on a trestle south of the concentrate dumper to a bottom dump for coke hoppers. These gondolas have already been dumped.



In the next photo, we are looking toward the car dumper on its southwest side. The dumper was located on the northwest side of the plant. The unique in-plant cars on the ground track were used for moving slag and baghouse dust to the mixing bins for recycling through the lead smelting process.

 

Another part of Americana gone forever.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

 

Wow, fantastic! Thanks for the great information and photos.

So was there a switcher or Trackmobile on hand to move those old friction bearing slag cars around?

Pat Moreland,
Union, MO

 

Great photos and information Ted!

Joe

 

Pat,

They had an EMD SW-type switcher in a faded light blue. I was never able to capture a photo, it was usually down at the slag dump south of the plant spotting dump cars.

They also had a small Brookville locomotive sitting outside the refinery area, as I look at the photo it makes me think it might be narrow gauge, but I do not remember any narrow-gauge plant equipment.

 

Thanks, Ted.

I read somewhere that the St. Joe mine itself had a switcher stationed there for a short time after the Lead Line was opened.

Pat Moreland,
Union, MO

 

Frisco stationed a switcher at Viburnum for a few years

It would work north to switch the St. Joe mill north of Viburnum, and south to Buick to work the smelter, mill, and St. Joe truck transfer.

The turn out of Cuba would come south and swap loads for empties.

Not sure how long the Viburnum switcher lasted before the turn began performing all of the work.

 

I use to deliver oil/fuel to a couple different tanks at Herky and several times that little Brookville loco pulled those smelting pot cars up the hill to dump something out.

It was definitely some type of narrow gauge.