Spotlight on the Kern Valley Museum: The Moore & Scott Iron Works Stamp Mill

Single stamp mills are hard to find these days. | Kern Valley Museum

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Single stamp mills are hard to find these days. | Kern Valley Museum

In the front yard of the Kern Valley Museum stands a unique old stamp mill. It's not huge (only a single stamp) or even in working order, but it is very rare. I have only found one other like it located at Columbia State Park in Columbia, California.

Our stamp mill was made by the Moore & Scott Iron Works Co. of San Francisco. The company was founded in 1905 and made mostly cast-iron items for the logging and marine shipping industries. In logging, probably their best-known product was a small, steam-powered engine commonly called a "donkey engine" used to drag logs from place to place.

In 1906, their foundry burned to the ground during the great San Francisco earthquake. However, they were the first foundry to recover and resume business that year.

In 1917, the Moore family bought out the Scott family and changed the company's name to the Moore Shipbuilding Co. Thus, items manufactured with the name of Moore & Scott were made for only 12 years. Mining items were a sideline, and since mining equipment was not their specialty, I doubt they made very many stamp mills. It is a rotating type of stamp mill and looks nothing like the large stamp mill in the museum's backyard. It does not use a cam to lift the rod and attached weight; instead, it turns the rod, forcing it up a cast-iron incline until it reaches the end of the incline. Then the rod and weight drop down to smash the gold-laden ore. It repeats this process over and over.

My description of its workings doesn't make much sense, so you must stop by and look closely at it. On the plaque attached to the stamp mill is cast "KENDALLS Pat. No. 1." It might be the first of its type made and perhaps the last. The Moore & Scott Iron Works stamp mill was donated to the museum by Rose Robinson, her son Beverly Robinson and her son-in-law George Burke in 1991. It was out in the Kelso Valley area. We think that it came from the Moscow Mine.

If you know anything about the history of this stamp mill or have pictures showing it being used, we would really appreciate the information. Please call the museum at 760-376-6683 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Thursday through Sunday, and leave a message. We would love to tell our visitors more about it.

One last bit of information about the Moore & Scott Iron Works. Its name was changed once again in 1923 to the Moore Dry Dock Co., and in 1962, it was involved in building a replica of the ship H.M.S. Bounty for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. They used the ship to produce the film "Mutiny on the Bounty."

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