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Seems a rather primitive method.

Locally here, with the major mining starting in the mid to late 1800s, charcoal was produced in mass in order to reduce rich ores to metal for shipment. Multiple large charcoal kilns were established wherever there was enough wood to justify production, and the finished products were then hauled to the mines and mills for smelting and refining.

Here are some famous charcoal kilns that still exist in the Death Valley area here locally:

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Here in the High Desert of the Eastern Sierra there were no local coal deposits and so coal could not be economically used for most smelting operations. The railroad coming in during the early 1880s made access to coal from Utah and Colorado feasible but still not really cost effective compared to making local charcoal. To add insult to industry (injury) for our local arid adapted forest of mostly Pinon Pine and Juniper which are both fairly small scraggly trees in this environment, but do burn more like a hardwood due to the dry conditions they grow under, when the railroads did get here, they were wood fired as well, for the first 20 years of their local existence, thus further decimating the limited resource of trees. I have some old original invoices and receipts from the Carson & Colorado Railroad for cordwood by the hundreds of cords for milling, mining and railroad uses. Those invoices were likely open ended, being filled on weekly or at least no more than monthly intervals!

Around the turn of that century the railroads here converted to coal, thus making it more locally available to the mines and mills as well, however by then the peak of the regional mining booms was mostly well past! After another ten years the railroad changed over to firing their engines with oil and never looked back.

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