The Colorado Mountains are a veritable gold mine for old engines thanks to the gold-mining boom of the late 1800s. The small town of Gold Hill was aptly named for that era, but one of the biggest mines in town was the Copper King, known surprisingly not for copper but for nickel. The mine ran from the late 1800s until 1946 and was one of only two known nickel mines in the state.
In the later years of the mine, the workhorse of the operation was a 1926 Witte gas-powered engine. This engine ran a large rock crusher near the entrance of the mine. It is possible that there are fewer than 11 engines of this size left in existence. This throttle-governed 25hp engine has a 10-inch bore, 14-inch stroke and the flywheels are 52 inches high.
It was 40 years after the mine closed that Jim Stengel rescued and restored the engine. Jim was deep into collecting and restoring Gibson tractors when his brother Bill told him about a large single-cylinder engine he’d found while surveying mountain property that included an old mine. The engine was still sitting on the wooden trestle next the large rock crusher that it powered. Jim was immediately excited about the new engine. He felt it was his duty to get the old engine running again.
When Jim and his brother went up to retrieve the engine, both the engine and the crusher were partially buried in the dirt and hanging off the edge of the mountainside. Weather and the elements would have taken the entire thing down into the valley below if Jim and his brother had not rescued it. The brothers traded the property owner for some welding work and a backhoe bucket in exchange for the engine.
The sheer size and weight of the engine posed a challenge when moving it. Jim and his brother ended up deconstructing the engine into three sections that could be loaded into the back of Jim’s 3/4-ton pickup and hauled down the mountain. On the way home, Jim decided to take the truck across a set of scales to find out how much the engine weighed: 3,850 pounds!
Once the engine was in the shop, the brothers began figuring out how to get the head off and the piston out, and how to make the various other needed repairs to get the engine running again. The process of disassembling, machining, and rebuilding took eight months. Jim and Bill documented the entire process with detailed photographs and notes. Jim managed to get in touch with the company that took over Witte gas engine production in 1967 and found records on the engine. According to the serial number, it was built in 1926 and sold September 28 of that year.
As the project neared completion, the brothers faced one more obstacle. While they had been able to lift the individual pieces of the engine using a hoist in Jim’s shop, they would be unable to lift the entire engine once fully assembled. Always resourceful, Jim found an old hay wagon and fabricated it to hold and tow the engine; the combined unit now weighs over 4,000 pounds.
In late 1980, I fell into the gas engine hobby and that is when I met Jim and first saw the Witte engine. Jim was a regular attendee at local farm and steam engine shows and actively maintained and displayed the engine for almost two decades until he passed in 2005. At one point, Jim offered to sell the engine to me, but the sheer size was a big complication and I did not know where to keep it, nor did I have the means to move it around. I ended up finding a smaller Witte to take to the shows with me. After Jim passed, our mutual friend Bob purchased the engine and continued to bring it to the local shows along with his other large engine. In 2021, Bob called to ask me if I wanted to buy it; I was thrilled to get a second chance to own this rare engine.
Bob and Jim most often used compressed air or belted the engine to a tractor to help get it started. After a minor tune-up and some research to track down the original instruction manual, I was able to learn how to start the monster by myself by turning the flywheels using the “back-kick” method. The engine continues to run well and most of the time it starts without much work. When running, the sheer size of the flywheels and the cylinder, combined with the loud noise of the engine, attracts quite the crowd at the farm shows. I am happy to be the caretaker of this fine example of Witte history and to continue the work of my friend Jim.
Send questions for author Mark Bailey to editor@gasenginemagazine.com.
