Got to love the 50's

Yeah, they did mine it with water in the late 1940's throught he late 1960's. The process was discribed to me by the mine manager in the early 90's as being the biggest waste of ore that ever happened. The story, as best as I can remeber it goes something like this..........
After mining ceased ont he south side of the White river and the Uintah was pulled up in 1939 all minign operations were moved to the Bonanza area. Up to that time, the mines had always been located in veins that were from 1' to 8' wide, and farely shallow compared tot eh veins on the north side of the river. After WWII the vast amounts of ore that were deposited int helarge 15' wide veins near Bonanza were open to developement and exploitation. The huge amounts of ore that were relatively easy to mine, caused the mining company to seek more and more uses for the ore. One of the things that was found, was that if the ore was heasted and cooked off, that gasolene and other gasses could be distilled from the ore. That is where the large refinery near Fruita came in to being. It was decided to build that refinery (shown on maps as "Gilsonite") to utilize the vast amounts of ore to make as much profit as possible with the ore. The amounts of ore that were needed to get gas, and kerosene, etc. were twenty times greater than the industrial needs of Gilsonite that made it chemically unique. So a mining process was derived that utilized high pressure water to fracture the ore int he vein. Since it is just slightly boyant in water, it was crushed and put in to the slurry pipe line that ran parrallel to the Uintah's old tracks, up tot eh top of Baxter Pass and down to the refinery near Fruita. Several methods were employed to mine the Gilsonite in this way, water canons, high pressure firehose, and even and old Willy's jeep with high pressure nozzles on the front. Typical of the American business model ( get me some profits today, to hell with tomorrow) the miners devised a plan to increase production, but decrease man hours.
This method was a large spinning arm that rotated from the center like a clock. Each of th etwo arms had several high pressure nozzles on them. A section hose was placed at the center point, and this devise was set at the top of an unmined vein. Pumping water in to the devise, the water nozzles would cause the arm to spin - much like some huge fifteen foot wide lawn sprinkler. As the nozzles cut the Gilsonite below it in to small chunks, the slurry of water and Gilsonite was pumped out from the center of the cut. Once the Gilsonite was removed from a layer, the whole thing was lowered farther in to the vein, in side the hole it had just made. This increase production drastically, and the mine engineers and bean counters were harolded as heroes. Teh vast huge Gilsonite veins were being "efficiently mined". The party was over afer about ten years of mining in this method though. Just like taking a thinribbon of cookie dough, and cutting out circles from the inside, this left the "triangle" side pieces left over in the vein. With little or no lateral stability, these columns of Gilsonite were to dangerous to mine and are still there today. The mine manager that I talked to int he early 90's said that he believes that they had waster almost half of the Gilsonite that was minable in those veins. mining today is relegated to small "worthless" veins that he 1950's miners had not even messed with, or to sections of the big veins that were harder to get in to, like at teh ends where the sandstone pinches off.
interestingly, it was his assumption, that the distant future of Gilsonite mining will be int he vein system on the south side of the river again, int he two foot wide veins east of Asphalt wash.