For 57 hours, Robert Hill remained trapped inside the darkness of a collapsed California mine tunnel while rescuers worked to reach him back in 1925.
The cave-in had missed crushing him by only a matter of feet. Sealed underground with no clear path to safety, Hill waited as the hours stretched into days and his family feared the worst.
Shortly before midnight on Saturday, he was finally brought out alive. By the following day, washed, fed, and dressed in clean clothes, the exhausted miner was back home in Grass Valley, surrounded by relatives, friends, and curious strangers eager to see the man who had narrowly escaped death.
Miner Is Rescued In Tunnel Which Held Him 57 Hours
GRASS VALLEY, California. — Bathed and clad in clean clothes, refreshed with sleep and food, Robert Hill, imprisoned for 57 hours in the Baltic mine tunnel, near here, and released shortly before midnight Saturday night, was the center of a family reunion at his home here yesterday.
Hundreds of friends and many strangers called during the day to see the man who had cheated death by less than a minute. Had he been a few feet farther advanced in his journey to the mouth of the tunnel Thursday afternoon, he would have been crushed in the cave-in which imprisoned him.
Hill today was in good physical condition, but was still pale and worn from his experience.
Source: Evening Star. Washington, D.C. June 15, 1925.
