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Victor Kral Interviewee: Victor Kral Interviewed: 1996, 1997 Published: 2004 Interviewer: Victoria Ford UNOHP Catalog #199 Description Victor Kral was one of the last of his breed, a true miner in body, mind, and spirit. His mining career spanned from the Great Depression until his death in May 2004. Vic was born in Pasadena, California, to parents who were tailors. As a teenager, he traveled alone to Reno with one small suitcase to live with his half brother. He graduated from Reno High School, then attended the University of Nevada’s Mackay School of Mines during the Depression, and like many college students at that time, alternated between work and school. He fi rst took a one-year break between his sophomore and junior years, working in an underground mine at Ruth, Nevada, where he became hooked on mining and changed his major from civil engineering to mining engineering. Between his junior and senior years, the work break lasted longer. He spent fi ve and a half years at various jobs that included road surveying for the Nevada Highway Department and working for the Soil Conservation Service. Vic said that through that work he learned the most about Nevada and its people. Vic graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mining and went directly from Reno to the E.L. Cord cyanide mill located outside Silver Peak, Nevada. His descriptions of the Cord Mill—not only the inner workings and processes of the mill, but the working and living conditions at the mining camp—are a valuable contribution to the knowledge of mining and milling in central Nevada in the 1930s. Aft er the Cord Mill job and a short stint at mining in northern California, Vic worked for the Department of Education in Carson City. Once again, he traveled around northern Nevada where he taught continuing education classes on mining. When World War II began, he worked as a civilian mining engineer with the war department. Part of his work took him to southern Nevada where he did appraisals on mining claims that were within the boundaries of government land—the area that would be used for military training and bomb testing. One of his accomplishments following the war, for which he felt pride, was writing several works on Nevada mining for the Nevada Bureau of Mines, including Mineral Resources of Nye County, Nevada. Also, while there, he worked with iron ore, a project that eventually led him away from Nevada. He moved his family to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and accepted a job with the Ford Motor Company, where he worked for fi ft een years. He described that as a time when Ford owned many of its manufacturing resources, such as iron ore mines. In later years, however, the Ford Company began changing, so Vic decided to take early retirement to pursue other interests. From there, Vic worked for the Hanna Mining Company in Maine and Arizona and for the Arizona Department of Mineral Resources. Aft er twenty-one years away, Vic returned to Nevada where he founded a successful consulting fi rm with Ralph Roberts and Bob Reeves, who were also notable among the Nevada community of mining men. Vic Kral passed away at the age of ninety-two. Although he no longer went out into the fi eld in his nineties, he was still teaching mining to younger engineers and even to his grandchildren. He created a series of historic mining (Continued on next page.) Description (continued) calendars, advocated for Mackay School of Mines, and collected nearly everything he saw pertaining to mining right up until the time of his death. In addition to being a miner, Vic was also a very kind and caring man who will be greatly missed, as will his enthusiasm for Nevada mining. Victor Kral was initially interviewed in 1996 by Victoria Ford for an oral history mining project about Silver Peak, Nevada. (See Oral History Nos. 183 and 192.) Th en Ms. Ford returned in 1997 to fi nish the interviews on Mr. Kral’s entire mining career. Th is oral history is the fi nal product. V K ICTOR RAL Victor Kral (Photograph by Victoria Ford) V K ICTOR RAL From oral history interviews conducted by Victoria Ford Edited by Kathleen M. Coles University of Nevada Oral History Program Copyright 2004 University of Nevada Oral History Program Mail Stop 0324 Reno, Nevada 89557 [email protected] http://www.unr.edu/oralhistory All rights reserved. Published 2004. Printed in the United States of America Publication Staff : Director: R. T. King Assistant Director: Mary A. Larson Production Manager: Kathleen M. Coles Text Designer: Linda Sommer Production Assistants: Beth Opperman, Kathryn Wright-Ross University of Nevada Oral History Program Use Policy All UNOHP interviews are copyrighted materials. Th ey may be downloaded and/or printed for personal reference and educational use, but not republished or sold. Under “fair use” standards, excerpts of up to 1000 words may be quoted for publication without UNOHP permission as long as the use is non-commercial and materials are properly cited. Th e citation should include the title of the work, the name of the person or people interviewed, the date of publication or production, and the fact that the work was published or produced by the University of Nevada Oral History Program (and collaborating institutions, when applicable). Requests for permission to quote for other publication, or to use any photos found within the transcripts, should be addressed to the UNOHP, Mail Stop 0324, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV 89557-0324. Original recordings of most UNOHP interviews are available for research purposes upon request. C ONTENTS Preface vii Introduction ix PART ONE 1 Education: University and On The Job 3 2 E.L. Cord Mill, Silver Peak 25 3 Milling Systems and Equipment 55 4 Career as Mining Engineer and Geologist 65 PART TWO 5 Mackay School of Mines 81 6 Teaching Prospecting 121 7 War Department and Bureau of Mines 131 8 Small-Mine Operations 141 9 Exploration 147 vi Contents 10 Friends and Fellow Miners 161 11 Women in Mining 187 12 Safety Practices and Labor Unions 197 13 Ford Motor Company and Hanna Mining 217 14 Mining Consultant 229 Index 253 P REFACE S INCE 1965 the University of Nevada Oral History Program (UNOHP) has been collecting eyewitness accounts of Nevada’s remembered past. While there is no standard chroni- cler profile nor rigid approach to interviewing, each oral history plumbs human memory to gain a better understanding of the past. Following the precedent established by Allan Nevins at Columbia University in 1948 (and perpetuated since by academic programs such as ours throughout the English-speaking world), these manuscripts are called oral histories. Some confusion sur- rounds the meaning of the term. To the extent that these “oral” histories can be read, they are not oral, and while they are useful historical sources, they are not themselves history. Still, custom is a powerful force. Historical and cultural records that originate in tape-recorded interviews are almost uniformly labeled “oral histories,” and our program follows that usage. The transcripts that resulted from Victoria Ford’s interviews of Victor Kral have been slightly edited for readability, but the natural episodic structure follows the interview tapes. Amuse- ment or laughter is represented with [laughter] at the end of the sentence; and ellipses are used not to indicate that material has been deleted, but rather to indicate that a statement has been viii Preface interrupted or is incomplete . . . or there is a pause for dramatic effect. For readers who are interested in examining the unaltered records, copies of the tape-recorded interviews are available at the UNOHP’s reading room on the University of Nevada, Reno campus. While the program can vouch that the statements in this volume were made by Victor Kral and that he has reviewed the transcript, it does not assert that all statements are entirely free of error. As with all oral history projects, Mr. Kral has recorded his remembered past, and memory is never flawless. Readers should exercise the same caution used when consulting government records, newspaper accounts, diaries, and other primary sources of historical information. UNOHP July 2004