Special Visit To The Incredible 16 to 1 Mine: Part 2 - Spy Raise & Boss's House

We continue our explore of the 16 to 1 Mine by seeing some more of the mine workshop, heading up the hill to see the mine superintendent’s house (where we learn about the spy raise) and then getting underground on one of the oldest levels of the 16 to 1. On this level, we will see the 16 to 1 Shaft as well as the spy raise.

As I said in the last video, I have to spread the history of this mine over at least several videos because it is so lengthy. So, here is the next segment, which, again, quotes from the excellent “Gold Mines of the Alleghany-Forest Mining District” by Raymond W. Wittkopp and Wayne C. Babros:

“The story of the Sixteen to One actually starts with the rediscovery of the Tightner vein. In 1891 a partnership of Jack Binning, G.W. Hildebrande and Charles Currieux was formed. These men were acquainted with Jim McCormick, who knew of a bedrock vein discovery nearly forty years before in the Knickerbocker drift tunnel. As a result of his enthusiasm they reopened the tunnel and rediscovered the vein. The partners drifted north on the vein and sank a small winze, but the vein “tightened” and was dubbed the Tightner by locals. The intense interest generated by the Tightner prospect right under the main street of Alleghany was undoubtedly what prompted Tom Bradbury to take a new look at the old outcropping quartz vein in his backyard and in 1896 to locate the Sixteen to One claim named in honor of the silver to gold ratio of U.S. coinage proposed by Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in his speeches.

Tom Bradbury, who as a small boy had played around this outcropping vein, was not the first to locate a claim on this ledge. Some years previously, John Fessler had driven a tunnel to cut the vein about fifty feet below the outcrop. Running into a significant fault zone (the Tightner fault) he abandoned the project.

In late 1903 H.L. Johnson obtained a one year lease with option to purchase the Tightner for $12,000. It then took $1,200 to rehabilitate the adit to the vein. As he recalled later, “They all thought that I was a damn fool, and I did too when I saw the vein, but I knocked out $20 in gold the first shot. Rather than drift north as others, he drifted south and it soon became apparent he had hit a major pocket. Nearly $470,000 was eventually taken out of this pocket by Johnson, who installed his former partner, Jack Binning, as superintendent. By 1907 the Tightner Mine was known for its richness.”

In the next videos, we’ll check out the mill at the 16 to 1 where the gold is processed and then we’ll REALLY get underground… We will tram in (take the mine’s electric locomotive) into what is now their main haulage adit and will start descending to the depths of this amazing mine.

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Our guide on this tour, Duane, has a YouTube channel of his own in which he has posted videos he has taken in mines where he has worked. It can be found here:

   / @muleskinnermining8661  

For more information on the Sixteen to One Mine or even to buy physical gold or stock shares from the company, one can visit their website at:

http://www.origsix.com/

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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so adjust those settings to ramp up the quality! It really makes a difference.

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

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

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. But, you know what? We enjoy doing it! This is exploring history firsthand – bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.

So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!

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