Great Mine At The Top Of A Desert Mountain

I don’t know why abandoned mines always must be on the tops of mountains and require a strenuous hike to reach, but that consistently seems to be the case. When it’s a great mine like this one though, I don’t mind all that much. Of course, any of the suffering involved in adventuring and exploring beats being stuck in a miserable, futile existence.

This particular abandoned mine was discovered in the late 1800s, but was not developed until the early 1900s. I have seen conflicting reports on whether the primary mineral mined here was lead or silver. Suffice it to say, there was an abundance of galena! Interestingly - at least to me - is that much of the host rock for that galena is limestone in this mine.

I didn’t see any sign of a bunkhouse on top of the mountain and so, presumably, the miners made their daily commute in a tram bucket. That would’ve been a hell of a way to commute to work up in the mountains… While we were stopped for lunch a bighorn sheep made his appearance next to the first tram tower that I pointed out on the video. I tried to capture a video of him, but it was too far away to turn out. Anyway, the point is that the mountains are serious enough to be home to bighorn sheep. So, those mountains are no joke.

Speaking of trams… In case you missed it because the wind was muffling the audio, I initially mistook the hoist house for a tram station since it was located so far away from the shaft. I have never seen a hoist located that far from a mine shaft and so it threw me off.

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You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L

You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: https://bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: https://bit.ly/2p6Jip6

Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.

Thanks for watching!

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Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.

These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever.

I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!

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