We’re doing something a little different and are exploring an active gold mine rather than an abandoned mine with this series… However, given the rich history of this mine, viewers will find no shortage of the history found in the abandoned mines we normally visit. And, history aside, this is an incredible mine all on its own. Almost everyone familiar with this region of California will know of the 16 to 1 Mine, but its fame extends internationally as well.
This mine has such a rich history that I do not have the space to relay it all here, but will instead spread the history over at least several of the videos in this series. To do so, I am going to quote liberally from the excellent “Gold Mines of the Alleghany-Forest Mining District” by Raymond W. Wittkopp and Wayne C. Babros:
“No other mine in the district was able to come close to the scale of mining that was conducted at the Sixteen to One Mine. With a payroll that at times averaged between 80 and 100 men the mine could do the development work that was necessary to keep a steady flow of gold, whereas many other mines of the district often had less than a dozen employees. As best as can be determined, over half of the gold production of the district came from this one mine. During the early 1930s when the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgic Engineers tabulated the 160 richest gold mines in the world, including South Africa, the Sixteen to One ranked 117. At the present time the mine consists of 26 miles of workings and extends to a depth of 3,000 feet along the vein.
The Original Sixteen to One Mine Inc. became an efficient mining company through the acquisition of a number of mines. Most important was the acquisition of the Tightner Mine by the company, but other important mines were the Ophir, the Twenty-One, the Rainbow and the Red Star. Today no thought is given as to which mine you are in as you walk through various workings.”
I posted another video of this mine several years ago, but was only shown a small part of the mine at that time… However, it will still be a good companion piece to this series as our recent visit focused on other parts of the mine. The video from the first visit is here:
• Exploring Active Mines: Alleghany's S...
What you’re going to see in this series is much, much more in depth… Among other things, you will see recently dewatered areas of the mine that few living human beings have seen and you will see recently blasted areas of the mine that no more than several human beings have EVER laid eyes upon. There are few places on this planet where one can make a claim like that.
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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