The Oskar Lignite Mine in Smogóry (Lubusz Land, Western Poland)

Abstract

The paper presents history of one of the largest mines in the Lubusz Land, namely the Oskar Mine in Smogóry near Ośno Lubuskie. The mine operated between 1860 and 1945 under the name of Oskar and later as Smogóry until 1961. The paper focuses on the detailed pre-war history of the Oskar Mine, shows its mining area, location of shafts and descending galleries. Available data about the amount of extraction and employment level are presented. The paper is based on remaining German archived materials (Main Mining Office) and on Polish documents. The paper describes briefly the discovery of lignite deposits in the 19th century near Ośno Lubuskie. Underground room and pillar retreat mining used in this mine is also characterized. Complicated lignite bed structure, ­resulting from geological conditions (glaciotectonic deformation), is discussed. The geological structures is illustrated by a few geological cross-sections.

Extent of the Odranian Glaciation in the Silesian-Kraków Upland

“…The pres ence of these es carp ments un doubt edly im - pacted the de vel op ment of river val leys within the Oder-Warta-Liswarta, Mała Panew, Kłodnica, Ruda and Olza river bas ins. Stopped by the Ju ras sic, Tri as sic and Car bon if er ous escarp ments, the Odranian ice sheet did not reach as far east as Klimaszewski (1952), Mojski and Rühle (1965) and Różycki and Lamparski (1967) pos tu lated. In many lo ca tions on the Silesian Up land, its max i mum ex tent co in cided with that shown by Lewandowski (2015) and Marks et al (2006), al though in some ar eas it prob a bly reached slightly far ther east and south-east.…”

“…But, the ab sence of typ i cal mar ginal zone forms on the Częstochowa Up land has made the de ter mi na tion of the max i mum ice sheet ex tent con tro ver sial in this area for many years. Apart from the ab sence of clear mar ginal forms, another dif fi culty arose from dif fer ent cri te ria that were used (Premik, 1934;Klimaszewski, 1952;Karaś and Starkel, 1958;Różycki, 1960aRóżycki, , 1972Chmal and Kopański, 1978;Lewandowski and Kaziuk, 1982;Lewandowski, 1987). A fur ther dif fi culty is posed by the ab sence or scar city of Scan di na vian rock frag ments in the gla cial de pos its.…”

“…More de tailed in for mation was ob tained as a re sult of stud ies by Premik (1934) who con sid ered the se quences of iso lated sandy and grav elly hummocks along the Piasek-Ciecierzyn-Częstochowa-Wrzosowa-Koziegłowy line to be end mo raines. The bound ary that was situ ated the far thest to the south-east was de ter mined by Klimaszewski (1952) on the ba sis of geomorphological cri te ria, but its course was only marked very sche mat i cally (Fig. 1).…”