Jim Bradshaw: Company wanted to freeze Belle Isle asset

It’s not very often that the ground is frozen solid on Belle Isle, the salt dome just a stone’s throw from the Gulf of Mexico. But it happened in 1962 — in the summertime, on purpose.

Cargill was trying to dig a shaft 16 feet wide into the dome, hoping to mine as much as 400,000 tons of salt each year. But the shaft had to pass through a 200-foot layer of “porous soil so saturated with subsurface water that ordinary excavation is ineffective,” according to a story in the Franklin newspaper. The soaked soil “threatened … constant flooding and cave-ins”

Cargill hired a bevy of engineers to come up with a solution, and they decided the easiest and cheapest thing to do was to turn the mess into ice.

“Freezing was accomplished by calcium chlorine brine at minus 33 degrees Fahrenheit [flowing through] an intricate network of steel tubing and casing set in 30 holes centered about the mine shaft and drilled 250 feet deep through the overburden,” according to the report.

“A two-stage 80-ton ammonia refrigeration system was installed at the job site to produce the sub-zero brine. The brine is circulated into the ground through a total of 7,500 feet of 2-inch steel tubing set inside another 7,500 feet of 6-inch steel casing. When the brine reaches the bottom of each freeze hole, it is returned to the surface through the casing for recirculation.” Permanent concrete lining kept the shaft from caving in once the ice thawed.

It was pioneering stuff, but not very glamorous, according to Frank Harrison, who superintended the frigid drilling operation.

“Because of the site’s remoteness, all construction equipment and supplies had to be barged in from Morgan City … through a maze of bayous, lakes and rivers where Jean Lafitte and other early-day buccaneers hid out between raids. …

"Mosquitoes and water moccasins abound, and the area, with 60 to 80 inches a year, has one of the country’s heaviest rainfalls,” according to the news story.

Harrison and his crew were not the first to brave these tribulations. The noted engineer Anthony Lucas tried to reach the Belle Isle salt in the 1890s, but the saturated layer was too much for him. He gave up because the shaft kept flooding.

The New Orleans Picayune described him back then as “an expert mining engineer, who for years has been identified with the salt mine discoveries of Louisiana.”

He’d already done work developing Avery Island and, about 1900, after the Belle Isle attempt, was hired by the brothers, Beverly and Frank Myles of New Orleans, “to superintend the sinking of the shaft and the erecting of the works necessary for the mining operation” at Weeks Island.

He didn’t stay there very long.

At least that was the claim in the lawsuit filed by the Myles Salt Co., charging that within a few days of getting to Weeks Island, Lucas “abandoned the contract, quit the service of the company, and left the island.”

Their suit was in response to one filed a week earlier by Lucas, claiming that the company owed him $5,000 in back pay.

Neither suit is very specific about the reasons for his departure. Rain, mosquitoes, and water moccasins weren’t so much the problem at Weeks Island.

And it is a bit less porous than Belle Isle, so it wasn’t for lack of a good two-stage 80-ton ammonia refrigeration system.

I suspect it was more likely tied to a trip he’d just made to Beaumont.

Lucas had developed a theory that salt and oil are likely to be found together, and had tested the idea in 1901 at the Anse le Butte dome near Breaux Bridge.

He found both oil and salt, but couldn’t get the backing to do anything with what he’d found.

He found backing for another try on his trip to Texas, and went back to Beaumont shortly after leaving Weeks Island.

That’s when he drilled the famous Spindletop oil well that touched off a frenzy in Texas and south Louisiana, launched the modern oil industry and made him rich.

It’s not clear whether the Myles brothers ever paid Lucas, but after Spindletop it didn’t matter.

They hired another engineer to open the Weeks Island mine, and made good money themselves.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.