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The Unknown Rio Grande

This page was last updated on November 10, 2023.

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By Mark Hemphill, November 2023

Floy

Originally known as Little Grand (or Little Grande), then in 1909 as Mora, then in 1910 as Floy, the siding was the site of a manganese ore loadout. The loadout's iron gates and chutes and sawn timbers were salvaged long ago, leaving only the dirt of the wagon ramp and cribbing made of rotted and split narrow-gauge crossties.

The loadout was constructed in 1901 by the CF&I Mine, named for its owner, Colorado Fuel & Iron, which operated the steel mill at Minnequa, Colorado. Manganese is an essential iron and steel alloying metal; it helps to remove oxygen and sulfur from iron ore during the smelting process, and added to steel it decreases brittleness and increases strength.

The mine, really more of a mining area, was scattered across a wide area from 10 to 20 miles south of the Rio Grande Western main line at Floy, on the east side of the Green River. Miners using rakes, picks, and shovels separated manganese oxide nodules from thin, horizontal beds of clay, exposed at the surface. The beds outcropped along sandstone bluffs that lined the shallow canyons of dry washes that ran many miles from the Green River out onto the desert. Manganese oxide, the common ore of manganese, is found almost everywhere in eastern Utah but nowhere in large quantity. The scattered beds of manganese ore mined by CF&I were only a few inches to several feet thick.

The mine and the district were both named Little Grand -- no e on the end of Grand. The name came from Little Grand, the original name of the nearest railway station. RGW in 1891 added an "e" to the name making it Litle Grande, and in later publications the name of the mine and the mining district are sometimes Little Grand and other times Little Grande. In 1909 RGW renamed the station Mora and in 1910 decided it didn't like that name either, and changed it to Floy.

The ore beds of the Little Grand District were noticed in the 1880s but nothing was done about them as there was at that time no market for the ore. In 1896, claims were staked on some of the thicker beds and the prospectors began looking for investors to develop their claims into mines. CF&I purchased the better claims in 1900 and 1901 and began mining them in 1901. It constructed an elevated loading ramp at Little Grande to aid in emptying the wagons that brought the ore to the railway, and to load the ore into either boxcars or flatcars equipped with sideboards. The manganese ore, about 40 percent manganese by weight, was shipped to Minnequa, and also to Chicago District steel mills. As many as three cars daily were loaded though more often it was less than one.

Mining activity in the Little Grande District soon became intermittent and ceased by 1906. The enterprise was unprofitable due to the large amount of hand labor necessary to break out and sort the ore nodules from the clay beds in which they occurred, the cost of transportation to market, and the cost in the barren desert of providing housing, water, and food to the men and draft animals engage in the mining and wagon hauls. A steam traction engine was thought to be a skookum solution but the soft clay of the crude roads connecting the mines to the railway would not support its weight. It promptly crashed through the crust and sank and after it was recovered it was sent away.

In 1915 mining resumed, induced by high manganese prices due to the First World War, then in 1918 ceased when the war ended and steel and manganese demand collapsed. Mining never has occurred since and probably never will as the ore beds are too thin and too small.

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