Page 15 - Traverse 50.3

level. John McLean, the engineer who ran the hoist for the cage,
blinded and suffocating from the smoke, nevertheless endured,
listening for the bell to bring the men up.
An autobiographical work by Comstock resident Harry M. Gorham
wrote, “…Wrinkle did a lot, all in fact, of the work in the mines with
which I was connected until he resigned to take charge of the soda
works at Owens Lake…Inscrutable and blunt he was, but it was never
too late or never too early to call for his help – a great little man…Af-
ter Wrinkle resigned, for a time his work was carried on by a German
engineer named Gotth Haist, a very capable man, but too old for the
active and trying work demanded in that class of vocation.”
15
Laurance Wrinkle settled in with his wife and family in Keeler. In
1888, he patented a process for treating native soda. But he did
not stop traveling to do survey work, going to Bodie, California
Bonner Shaft of the Gould & Curry Mine, Virginia City, Nevada. Today it is
near the site of the Hugh J. Gallagher Elementary School and other mining camps in the area.
In 1893, he
contributed an article to the Engineering and Mining Journal on his method of shaft
plumbing. In “A Method Of Carrying A Survey Line Down Shafts”, Wrinkle wrote, “I
have carried surveys from surface down mine levels - 1,000, 1,200, 2,000 and
3,000 ft. deep - also to lesser depths and often from one underground level to
another…under adverse conditions as to heat, water and draughts of air in the
shafts…”.

Using No. 16 annealed iron wire and 25-pound plumb bobs settled in containers of
water and protected from dripping water from above, he used the entire width of
the shaft compartments, giving the greatest distance between the wires to recreate
the wire plane’s azimuth from the surface, down to an underground station. Then by
marking the shadow of the wire’s oscillation on a white board behind each wire and
determining the midpoint of the swing, he could fix a straight edge along the wire
plane and transfer the plane thus formed from the shaft to the stations by means of
a long T-square.
Ultimately, to facilitate his mining work, Wrinkle resigned from the Inyo Develop-
ment Company in the Fall of 1895. He later sold the company the 623 acres he had
previously patented for $5.
In 1900, Wrinkle accepted a position as Professor of Mining Engineering at the State
University of Nevada in Reno. At that time, the Mining Department was in the Col-
lege of Agriculture. Joncy Morgan was one of five miners who died on the
400-foot level of the Gould & Curry Mine. He is buried in
the Silver Terrace Cemetery in Virginia City
Soon afterward he was asked to speak at a general assembly of university students. The Daily Nevada State Journal reported, His subject
was “Mine Surveying”.
The talk was painfully technical, but was intensely interesting to those who are
interested in the science…Mr. Wrinkle…knows whereof he speaks. 16

While Laurence was teaching at the University, his son George began at-
tending classes there. Straight away George joined the T. H. P. O. fraternity,
the oldest fraternity at the school. For years no one knew what the initials
stood for. But on Dec. 30, 1916, an article appeared in The Reno Evening
Gazette noting that the T.H.P.O., had been granted a charter from Sigma
Alpha Epsilon. A student from the early 1900’s recalled that some students
got together and, “..formed a little association, and they called it The Hill Protec-
tive Organization, or T.H.P.O for short.” In 1901, Wrinkle was given charge of the
Department of Mining and Civil Engineering.
Wrinkle worked on mining projects while he
continued to teach. In September of 1901, he CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE u
was an expert witness in the locally famous Desert King Mining Co, vs George
Wrinkle’s T-Square method for moving the wire plane out of the
shaft, from The Engineering and Mining Journal, January 28, 15
1893, page 81 Gorham, Henry M, My Memories of the Comstock-An Eyewitness Account of the Rich-
est Place on Earth, Los Angeles, Suttonhouse Publishers, 1939, pg. 54
16 The Daily Nevada State Journal, May 4, 1900
The Nevada Traverse Vol.50, No.2, 2023 13