PUITS SIMONFull series on my website: Puits Simon.The Puits Simon was one of the most important coal

PUITS SIMONFull series on my website: Puits Simon.The Puits Simon was one of the most important coal mines in the Lorraine basin in the French Moselle region. It owes its name to the engineer Guillaume Simon, managing director of the Compagnie des Houillères de Petite-Rosselle from 1905 to 1913. Behind the scenes, the mine belonged to the empire of the Wendel family, known from Bureau Central and Mine des Grimpeurs. The coal deposit was identified by a series of drillings carried out between 1817 and 1849, but it was not until 1904 that digging of the Simon No. 1 shaft began.This extraction site consisted of five mine shafts, of which this location included shafts 1 and 2. Shaft 1, with a depth of 478 meters, went into operation from 1907 and barely a year later excavation work for shaft 2 started. At the same time, work began on the shower building, administration building, workshops and thermal power plant. These were completed in 1910. For Shaft 2, which reached a depth of 498 meters, mining began in 1914, on the eve of WWI.The mining company was not spared disasters. On February 25, 1985, 22 miners were killed in a mine fire and more than 100 injured. After the closure of the Wendel mine in 1985, logistical consolidation followed, with all above-ground activities and administration concentrated on the site of the Puits Simon. On December 5, 1997, a last symbolic mining cart emerged from shaft No. 2. Mining in the eastern sector of the mining basin stopped there. From 2002, the site was abandoned and the buildings and structures fell into disrepair. -- source link

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