Page 24 - Bulletin 14 2010

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Town’s only real mining venture. It had started with energy, enthusiasm and hope but had
died with barely a whimper and, it would appear, little if any profit for anyone.

This brief history of the mine would be incomplete without some discussion as to why it

failed. One possibility is of course that the price of tin plummeted during the life of the mine,

thereby rendering it unprofitable. This, however, is not the case. When tin ore was discovered
on the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak by A. C. Ross in June 1910, the price of tin on the

London Metal Exchange stood at £148 per ton. Two years later, in 1912, when the mine
ceased operating it had risen to £212 per ton. The reason must therefore be sought elsewhere.

Although one cannot speak with absolute certainty, all the evidence points strongly to the fact
that the positive surface indications with regard to the quality and quantity of the ore were not

maintained at depth and the mine simply ran out of ore. This hypothesis is supported by the

fact that today it is extremely difficult to find even the slightest trace of ore in the mine – it
has been totally mined out and nothing remains.

In 1989 the City Planner’s Department of the City of Cape Town commissioned a report on
the mine by the Science Education Unit of the University of Cape Town. This report, which

was presented to the City Council in October 1990, contained numerous recommendations for
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the action required to preserve the mine. It is distressing to record that none of these has
been put into effect by the City Council and over the years the condition of much of the mine
has continued to deteriorate. Thus the flumes have become steadily more undercut as a result

of erosion, the supply dam is choked with rocks, and the entrance to the mine has largely

slumped and only a small entrance hole remains. (Fig. 1.12.)

On 1 May 1998 the land on which the mine is situated was incorporated into the Cape
Peninsula National Park, now the Table Mountain National Park. As was the case with the

Cape Town City Council, the National Parks Board has not lifted a finger in the twelve years
of its trusteeship to preserve this valuable site.