In mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 history, a Hallidie ropeway is a cable system used to haul ore

Ore

An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element....

 from a mine.

History

Andrew Smith Hallidie

Andrew Smith Hallidie

Andrew Smith Hallidie was the promoter of the Clay Street Hill Railroad in San Francisco, USA. This was the world's first practical cable car system, and Hallidie is often therefore regarded as the inventor of the cable car and father of the present day San Francisco cable car system, although...

 was a Scot

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 who came to America to seek his fortune, with his father, in the goldfields
of California

California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...

. His father had been a blacksmith

Blacksmith

A blacksmith is a person who creates objects from wrought iron or steel by forging the metal; that is, by using tools to hammer, bend, and cut...

 and an inventor, and had worked with iron rope in Scotland.
Not finding much gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

, Andrew Hallidie went into the blacksmithing business.

He soon was contracted to build suspension bridge

Suspension bridge

A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders. Outside Tibet and Bhutan, where the first examples of this type of bridge were built in the 15th century, this type of bridge dates from the early 19th century...

s. In the course of his travels around the west, Hallidie noticed that
manila hemp

Manila hemp

Manila hemp, also known as manilla, is a type of fiber obtained from the leaves of the abacá , a relative of the banana. It is mostly used for pulping for a range of uses, including speciality papers. It was once used mainly to make manila rope, but this is now of minor importance...

 rope was being used to haul ore buckets up from the depths, and with not much success as it was subject to
weather, and wear for sand and gravel. In turn, Hallidie turned his bridge experience to building flat, woven iron ropes.
These turned out to be servicable. They sold well, particularly in the silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

 mines of the Comstock Lode

Comstock Lode

The Comstock Lode was the first major U.S. discovery of silver ore, located under what is now Virginia City, Nevada, on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range. After the discovery was made public in 1859, prospectors rushed to the area and scrambled to stake their claims...

 of
Virginia City, Nevada

Virginia City, Nevada

Virginia City is a census-designated place that is the county seat of Storey County, Nevada. It is part of the Reno–Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 855 at the 2010 Census.- History :...

.

About 1867 Hallidie devised an aerial tram to haul ore down the mountain sides. An early one was built in Vallejo, Utah.
Hallidie's system used one cable to support and haul the buckets, "Curule chair

Curule chair

In the Roman Republic, and later the Empire, the curule seat was the chair upon which senior magistrates or promagistrates owning imperium were entitled to sit, including dictators, masters of the horse, consuls, praetors, censors, and the curule aediles...

" type towers, bolted brackets and
small cubic buckets.

Hundreds of Hallidie Tramways were built in the next thirty years. Systems were built in the US, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and
Japan. If one looks carefully around the West, one can still see remnants of Hallidie systems.

Edgar Myron Kahn (1940). California Historical Society Quarterly - Andrew Smith Hallidie