Finding Big Quartz At The Little Sister Mine

One encounters many unexpected things when exploring abandoned mines. In that category of unexpected things, the weather can sometimes feature quite prominently. As such, you’ll see in this video that even though we are exploring at the height of summer, we find ourselves caught in a blizzard and then hail and then rain. And, yes, that was indeed as unpleasant as it sounds. So, regrettably, we did not explore the forest around this gold mine as extensively as we normally would at an abandoned mine site. I did hike up the mountain a short distance from the adit near the workshop (the first adit we saw that was collapsed) and discovered another adit that was eroded shut, but had enormous rails coming out of it. I would place the size of the of the waste rock pile at that upper adit in the smaller to medium category… Across the creek, I am fairly certain that I caught a glimpse of some equipment or boards higher up the mountain when we were walking around down below the main adit we explored. However, given that we were soaking wet and miserably cold, we were not particularly keen on trying to slip and struggle our way up a steep, muddy mountainside. Additionally, given the collapsed state of the adits and levels of this mine that we did visit, I did not have a high degree of confidence in finding any additional smaller, upper levels to be in better condition. As such, a portion of this abandoned mine remains unexplored... Additionally, the largest locked building contains a ball mill and, undoubtedly, other equipment as well. There was also a large trailer home above the workshop that apparently served as a bunkhouse and a building right along the creek that was perhaps one hundred feet upstream from the bridge. This building had wooden stairs leading down to it and was completely clad in corrugated metal. It seemed that the creek had pulled off some of the metal, but the building was still locked up tight. I am disappointed that we weren’t able to see inside any of these buildings, but we are not going to break into anything even at a mine that has been abandoned.

From the research I did on this mine, it appears that the prominent quartz ledge seen inside of the mine was discovered in the early 1860s. The mine has been worked off and on since that time with peaks in activity (according to the paperwork I could locate) taking place in the 1920s, 1950s and 1960s. Official records indicated gold production at tens of thousands of ounces.

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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 niche of our history is gone forever. But, guess what? We have fun 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 hundred years, 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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