Mining traditions of wilcza poreba and its surroundings

Wilcza Poręba is a district in Karpacz. It used to be a separate settlement, part of the mountain estate of Count Schaffgotsch of Cieplice, where lumberjacks, shepherds and colliers lived. The latter dealt with making charcoal for the steelworks and smithies of Kowary and Ścięgny. The last wood piles in Wilcza Poręba burnt at the turn of the 19th century.
Wilcza Poręba is located in the meeting place of two famous valleys of the Karkonosze Mountains: Sowia Dolina and Kocioł Łomniczki. There were once large-scale mining activities in the area. The Łomniczka, a tributary of the Łomnica River, was very early explored by gold and gem prospectors. Descriptions of pathways leading to the valley of the Łomniczka can be found in the 14th and 15th century Walloon Books. As gold was abundant, the first mines soon appeared. In the early 16th century intense exploration took place near Śnieżka on the Bohemian side of the mountains. On October 4, 1534, Bohemian king Ferdinand granted 17 miners a 20-year permit to extract metal ore in Obří důl.
At the same time, within the same ore deposit zone, but on the Silesian side of the mountains, there were mines at the foot of Śnieżka, in Kocioł Łomniczki. Mining activities were so intense that local people on both sides of the border still recall amazing stories of underground passages between Kocioł Łomniczki and Obří důl. In the 18th century there were lead and silver mines on the slopes of Śnieżka. Contemporary documents confirm it. In 1711 Empress Regent Elisabeth granted Bernard Koburg a permit to conduct mining activities in Karpacz and separately on the slopes of Śnieżka. It is clear from the document that in both places there had been some mining activities before. Around that time, on newly created Silesian mining maps, 18th century explorers plotted old, 15th and 16th century mining sites, which they discovered. Nothing has remained from those old mines and now nobody can find them.
Yet in the 19th century, residents of the Karkonosze Mountains mentioned symbols carved on rocks in Kocioł Łomniczki. They were said to have been carved by treasure hunters and miners, but they also symbolically marked places where tragedies had happened. The ‘lying hammer’ symbol was the most common. Unfortunately, none of those engravings have survived. Now only place names preserved on maps confirm former mining activities at the foot of Śnieżka. On an 17th century map by Kühnovius, Kocioł Łomniczki was called Maeltzgrund or Maeltzgrube. The word maeltzen or melzen means schmelzen or weich machen ‘to melt, to soften.’ This indicates that in that place there must have been many adits, where miners excavated ore for a forge that was situated there, hence the name on the 17th century map.
On the eastern slope of Mała Kopa, near a rock that can only be seen from the valley of Jelenia Góra or from Śnieżka, there is the name Kohlgrube. Centuries ago a newly found vein or the whole deposit of ore was named after its discoverer. Georgius Agricola, the greatest expert in old mining traditions, wrote that it had happened in Annaberg that a charcoal burner found a vein that was called Kölergang ‘collier’s vein.’
Iron ore that was excavated in Kocioł Łomniczki was processed in a furnace at Wolfshauer Eisenbergwerkes in Wilcza Poręba. There was also o forge, where the local iron ore was melted down. In the late 19th century, on the property of Gerhart Pohl and Kurt Frommberg, where the furnace once stood, one could still find pieces of cinders containing so much iron that magnetized pointers reacted to it. Even small amounts of magnetite always create local magnetic fields causing magnetic deviation.

From Wilcza Poręba it is just a step to Sowia Dolina, a valley that has been explored by people looking for gold, gems and other underground treasures since the Middle Ages. On 21 August 1893 D. Cogho, a well-known 19th century pursuer of Walloon engravings, thanks to some hints from Liebig, a forest warden from Wilcza Poręba, managed to find Walloon symbols in the northern rock group of Skalny Stół. They depicted two mining tools above a cross.
An old Walloon record describes the way to Sowia Dolina and its hidden treasures: In Miłków ask for the southward path through the Snowy Mountains; walking along it look for a pointy hill [Księża Góra] and when you reach it, leave it on your right, in the north… Now look for a ridge that looks like made from stones. There a stream starts, flowing down the slope and into a valley. When you reach the Stony Ridge, …you will find gold, garnets and gems.
An 18th-century book about mineral deposits of Lower Silesia mentions the minerals of Sowia Dolina. Above Wilcza Poręba, on the slopes of Czarna Kopa, one could find copper, silver and tin ore, as well as lots of iron ore. The place was then called Schwarze Klippe.
The mines of Sowia Dolina were first mentioned in 1703 and they excavated garnets. A fairly accurate description of the gemstone mines in the valley comes from Rev. J. T. Volkmar of Piechowice, who visited the region in 1760 and described the journey in Reisen nach Reisengebirgen (1777).
Garnets are a group of minerals, whose name might have been derived from the plant of pomegranate. In riverbeds of the valley called Sowia Dolina and in mica-schist of the western slope, one can find quite large, red garnets that were excavated centuries ago. In the 1970’s it was possible to separate numerous 3 mm garnets from rock with the use of a disintegrator.
Mining activities in Sowia Dolina went on throughout the entire 19th century. At the foot of the rock formations called Granaty and Walońskie Kamienie, at 820 m above sea level, a mine was established in the first part of the century. It processed copper ore with admixture of lead. The mine closed in 1862. A few years later mining activities started near Buława on the left side of the Płóknica. Today traces of an old adit can still be seen – it belonged to the Effnert family of Kowary. They employed 2-5 miners from Ścięgny who extracted copper ore in the 100 m adit. The Effnerts’ mine became famous for a geological discovery in 1883. H. Mende, a rentier from Kowary, found an andalusite crystal, which was the first discovery of that mineral in the Karkonosze Mountains. However, a real geological sensation of the 19th century was the discovery of adularia, or moonstone. Its name comes from the Adula Mountains near St. Gotthard in Switzerland, where the best specimens have been found in Alpine fissures. Adularia is the symbol of Switzerland and Ceylon. Adularia found in the adit in Sowia Dolina was then the only one in Silesia.
Most traces of the mines in Sowia Dolina have vanished. Yet in Wilcza Poręba you can see a natural phenomenon, which was first described in 19th century guidebooks and descriptions of Silesia. Between the 13th and the 24th December, the sun is so low that you cannot see it during the whole day. The slopes of Kowarski Grzbiet, Czarny Grzbiet, Śnieżka and Kopa block out the sunlight, so the seeming polar night occurs.