A Rare Find, This Mine Belongs in a Museum

hidden deep in the backcountry and smoke-filled mountains of nevada two mines new and old exist nestled in a pine tree landscape with grand stories of promised riches only to end up like so many dreams failed and broken discovered in 1867 and with new arrivals setting up a more modern mill site as late as 1938 the 11 bars mine produced silver and gold before being abandoned prior to world war ii the 11 bars mine was a much more successful operation unlike its much older 1871 counterpart with incredible stories of a half a million of investors dollars lost with the construction of a 70 stamp mill and roaster still observable in the valley below [Music] now come with me as i embark on yet another amazing adventure exploring highly unstable sections collapsed passages and incredible museum quality artifacts that surround the eleven bars bind [Music] so [Music] well hey everybody welcome back okay we have an exciting location for this weekend and it's a location that i have been eagerly anticipating getting to and we're finally here after all of these weeks what i've got behind me here is a giant silver mine but what makes it 10 times better is all the fabulous artifacts that are laying all around this location insane just insane there's there's four massive engines behind me uh looks like a huge hit and miss we got an engine over here all kinds of stuff to look at so i might be incorporating that somehow into this video mr m here is going to be doing my b-roll that's why i've got him all gussied up and looking professional so um so where are we okay we're at a big big silver mine giant waist rock pile way out in the middle of the no middle of nowhere and that's why we decided to take bigger bob which is mr m's pickup truck you probably saw that on the drone footage out to this location because it's so far away i can't wait to get inside and and see what's what's inside this mine i'm just super stoked so what do you say mr um let's head on i can't wait either warm out here i know it's cool in there absolutely it's cool out here let's go let's go let's get inside okay all right everybody let's explore this old mine so right here in the portal we've got a couple of uh benches for the miners to set their hats on or whatever else i suppose down here on the ground i'm seeing a bunch of um airline for drills got a little thing going off that way but it stops right there so let's head on down the primary yeah i'm uh really excited to get into this mine i i've been looking at this one and scouring over it on google earth for just weeks and weeks and and now finally here we are we just passed a bunch of vent pipe on the ground we've got you guys have asked me what are these wooden stakes for that they sometimes pound into the back of the mine those are for hanging that vent pipe as well as sometimes uh hanging lighting oil lamps or candles interesting looking stuff definitely poultry material through this stretch yep okay i'm feeling a lot of moisture in my face here yep definitely getting damper and we're coming into a fairly large room let me show you here there's a drift going off that direction turning around we've got a stop going off this direction with an accumulator and a 55 gallon drum here in the foreground around that accumulator we've got a decline uh that went down but it looks like it may have collapsed we'll come back and explore that here in a bit let's turn around here and look over where randy is randy what do we got up in here oh yeah another another big stop up in here yep so we're gonna have to go check that out and down here off to the right we've got another drift going off that way just all kinds of stuff to explore all right well you you guys know me i like to do the primaries first so let's keep heading up into this mine so last weekend i was having all kinds of problems with my o2 sensor and uh i figured out that what it was mostly was i i failed to recalibrate it and uh that's why it was getting really sensitive and now that i've recalibrated it's working great wow this whole area has slowly come down over time look at that it's probably 15 feet tall in this room yeah and it's just completely failed what's up here oh i think i'm gonna go peek up here first guys let's see what we got oh it's no wonder all this is failing there's groundwater coming in yeah all right oh it's an ore pass yep or pass coming up from the stops okay let's turn back around we're going to turn back around and as i said last weekend we got mr m here capturing all kinds of great b-roll for me and i got my own audio now that's right and his his audio finally came in so i can i can dub that in for some added humor right mr m that's right they can hear what i say all the time when i don't really say it all right here's some graffiti lori and jean were in here in 64. yeah and i'm i'm breathing much better today than i was last weekend my goodness all that smoke that was coming down from oregon and uh the california fires was just killing my allergies making me totally miserable wow look at this big pod well i'll have to get up there a little bit more to see if this is lensed or if this is a pod or structure it looks pod like to me yeah i really want to get up in here um except it's so darn crumbly though all right let me see if i can climb up here show you guys this okay oh isn't that something wow all right first of all let me get over here to get my footing a little bit better hey let's look down off here to the left so i can see a bunch of shining mica coming out of it looks like some decomposing granite up in there that's why all this is falling to the ground not quite sure about the black material and down over here okay let's go a little bit higher and see if we have a drift hiding on the back side of this let's look no no that's as far as it goes right there turn it back around let me show you guys so this this room's probably 35 feet in diameter and uh 15 feet tall okay i'm gonna head back down to where mr m and randy are down there and uh see what else we can explore in this fantastic silver mine okay guys i came down from that big pot ore body and i grabbed a piece of the black stuff that i found that was hanging up there on the ceiling this is what it looks like close up i'm not going to call it shale because i can see some limestone material in there i'm not 100 sure what's making that black interesting looking stuff definitely it's a sheer zone because there's um slick and slide up on the up on the back of the mine up there all right turn it back around let's see what else this mine has to offer oh so you guys are probably asking me well what is slick and slide that is an area of fault gouge where two faults are rubbing up against each other creating kind of like a smooth sheen uh between two rock surfaces okay so we know we can't go any further that way what we're gonna have to do now is we're working our way back to one of the drifts that we bypassed earlier on here okay now we're back in the room with uh with that big accumulator so i think what i want to do next i got the the guys coming from the primary let's go explore this let's do this one next good all right notice how uh dampened our voices are in here yeah it's extremely crumbly look at the size of these stops look up in there wow oh mercy look at that there's a pillar right there a pillar is about three to four feet in diameter and uh just a lot of loose material yeah keep an eye on the geology guys this is a crumbly one okay for example like the one right above my head here watch out for that one mr m here's a raise they cut up into this into that stop above us right there i can see some lymanites in here too see all the oranges red yeah see that okay all right once again i'm going to show you what's above my head seems like every 30 to 40 feet we go in this vine we've got another big pod like or lens like ore body above our heads that right there is at least 50 feet above me here too cool all right let's keep going and once again well yeah look at here once again right above my head so what they're doing is they're they're stopping that out and dropping it down these massive ore passes down here into this drift and taking it out of the mine anything up this direction no i see the geologists have been up in here taking a close look at it oh that's super duper cool there i wonder if i can get up there mr m yeah yeah all right hey can you hold that a second yes this looks like a good decision guy what do you think huh does this look like one of my better decisions yeah okay well i just gotta see what's up here all right come on up can you reach me from there oh yeah maybe yeah almost almost you got her good job all right give me a second guys i gotta set the camera down for just a moment yeah maybe look where you're going and see if that's where you want to keep going okay what do we have here more of that really black so they're not they're not mining this black rock whatever it is here they're not that's definitely not something they're chasing after wow this is really cool but look at the sheen can you see see how that's just shining on there it's it's polished like the bottom of a dinner plate mary's making clown chowder tonight mary's making clam chowder yeah is it clam chowder it is oh boy you shouldn't have said dinner plate oh mary makes the best clam chowder guys i gotta tell you it is absolutely heavenly all right um not sure where that goes that's just coming down from another part of one of these stops i think i'm gonna head back down to that drift and uh crawl up into another one of these and see what we can find okay see you back there okay we're back over here by that big area with the accumulator and that big 55 gallon drum now before we go any further into this mine i wanted to show you guys something um with your help uh your support as well as youtube ad revenue i was finally able to acquire what's called the uv beast this is one of the most powerful handheld uv flashlights on the market and uh i was on a waiting list for two months to get this and i'm so glad that i finally got it it is just fantastic so randy while we're running around in here i'm gonna hand this off to you and if you see anything super cool be sure to point it out to me in the audience we'll come back and see if we can't uh shine some light on some really cool cool um what fluorite minerals in the mind yeah that'll be just fantastic but for now um i think i want to head off this direction so let's get going that way all right let's work our way past that accumulator some of you are asking me what is an accumulator well that's where they would store the compressed air so you got your pump is outside and you pump in the air and you've that's that's a big tank for your compressed air to run your drills and then oftentimes you'll see smaller tanks that are nearby a larger accumulator and those were to control condensation because you get a lot of condensate in those lines and uh that was a way of getting that condensation out look at this it's so black more of that really dark material it goes down over that direction okay but first let's see if we have a drift hiding up in here anything up in there is it worth going down there oh yeah that might be a drift okay don't touch anything on the back of the mine guys yeah no kidding all of this came down over the years it'll squash you like a bug that's comforting well you only feel it for a second or two yeah what's down here i'm telling you there's seriously something on the matter with the man i think we're gonna find a watch in just a minute he's gonna say come on you guys you gotta see this what's that oh tree stump okay let's look back in here yeah this is uh this mine is really damp really humid it's like exploring a sauna i'm just loving all the the beautiful lima knights poking their way through the different layers of strata really pretty stuff but uh yeah i'm just uh sweating like crazy everybody else is too real wet mine not wet enough to create puddles okay now what we have to do i believe if we go this direction see this is the stuff that makes me really crazy because we have a giant slab above our heads and absolutely none of it is supported by timbering or anything so i'm going to get through this area quickly oh boy can we get this way no we've got a big cliff below us we're not going that way what about down here well we got a pillar holding everything up oh no stops right there too okay mr m and randy are right over here let's get out of this section this is incredibly dangerous um i'm not liking it yeah let's head back to that big accumulator okay beat you there we just came from that direction now we're gonna go down to where this used to be a decline and unfortunately yep that one time this would have went all the way down but now it's completely failed i'll tell you what i'm going to go ahead and climb up and over the debris field oh there was a tiny little spot that's too bad it's too small it's only eight inches in diameter there but maybe what are the chances we could get to that decline if we go over here nope this just brings us right back to where we were and we're not going to be able to get down there guys darn it nope okay well i'm going to keep scratching around here and see what else i can find for you guys i'm headed back to the primary okay once again we're back to that big room we were just that direction over there there's one more place in here that we haven't looked at yet when we first came in and that was off to the right now you see here that one time they probably had rail coming out on these two big six by sixes so they could load an ore card up from right here so that tells me we can either go up or down let's start down yikes oh that's a squeeze even with that new skinny backpack yeah yeah i don't know if you guys have taken notice yet but i've upgraded my backpack i'll give you a close-up shot of that later it's really nice all right what do we have up here oh another big stop there we go and the pillar yeah what the heck i can climb up there huh well that is just let's see if i can get a little more light on that all right [Music] because this is basically going in the same direction as that other passage all right climbing up about a 45 degree angle here okay that's as far as it goes there turn it around oh yeah spun he's fun he made me come in here it goes over there that's as far as it goes let's look over here yeah darn laser comes on by itself in humid conditions darn it it'll turn off eventually got a big pillar right there about three feet across and if we went down that direction over there that's just gonna take us back to that uh the area with the accumulator and down below me here and where we came from with mr b-roll here we go i'm telling you bye all right what do you what do you think mr m where do we go from here in this video because i was back there and when i heard you say oh yeah i can climb up there i came in after you oh yeah i see nice yeah i just i i love your ambition i like living all right we're headed back to that other spot so you want to tell everybody what we're doing randy what are we doing lie what are we doing okay well we explored pretty much everything inside that mine and unfortunately all the drifts as well as the decline everything's collapsed it's just a shame i was really hoping this is going to turn out in to be a big mine but there is another at it up on the hill and that's what we're going to do now we're going to work our way up to this at it and see if we can't find another way into this big mine um while we're standing here you guys see this big pipe so this is what they brought water up to the mill site here and it goes all the way down to the very bottom down there and there's a spring you can see how nice and green it is in the bottom lots of water down there and and uh so as i look at this area over more and more i think what they were doing here is at this mill site they were crushing the ore and uh i they were probably going after gold and silver both at this location and trying to get out the free gold and then down in in the valley in the very bottom there's a giant smokestack down there and that's where they were roasting or um to separate the silver from the sulphides at that location but that mill is much much older than this one here okay let's uh climb up the rest of this hill and see if we can't get into another one of these edits almost there guys there we go let's see what we have up here the mill's off to my left here's the attic but oh wouldn't you know shoot yeah forest service came in and they bat barred it so we're not getting into this one guys nope forest service been has been hard at work all right well i think what i want to do next since that's all the addits in just this area i really want to show you guys some close-ups of that equipment down here at the mill site there's just some incredible stuff down in there so i'll see you down there well hi everybody guys let me do this isn't that nice anyway we found what i consider that was certainly the biggest impact for engine air compressor it's a huge air compressor so huge that they had to use this machine here i extrapolate to operate a water pump at the end of it that goes into that repurposed boiler center over there and they were flushing water through it to try to cool down some of the air before it would go to the various accumulators inside that really nice mine that we were just inside of but come on and follow me this there's so much cool stuff in here that it isn't even funny well it's funny but look at the size of this cylinder this piston has got to be a 20 inch piston and it throws not very much we'll get to that in a minute but it has another one on this side it's interesting the belt's still on this giant magnificent flywheel would you look at the size of that thing they had to cast it in two parts it's enormous the belt's still on it it came down under this idler pulley and up over the drive pulley right down there in the bottom you'll see in just a second i think i shot some b-roll on it earlier but then the belt comes back under here this is one of four engines that's all tied together [Music] by this gearbox that's in between them there's one two three four of these general motor diesel engines look at the valve assembly on this one two three four five six four six cylinders diesels and over on the other side there's some really cool where a guy got to stand and uh and actually like throw the levers to operate this monster just stinking huge there's one two three four motors gm diesel power says and that says harrison radiator division of general motors you can bet that mr harrison did quite well anyway here's those levers wow it looks like they were pulling hydraulics off of this too see how these housings are missing right here and how these output shafts are barely touching that's what the that's what early hydraulic stuff looked like yeah that probably used the hydraulics to power this stuff at any rate just a giant i think i gotta go around another way here okay so come on over here and check this out all these belts laying on the ground are laying out this way so they had something else that this four engine bank was power and other than just the air compressors that's pretty interesting and one two three four five six seven eight nine ten belts they were pushing several hundred horsepower from that thing and there's the workings up on the hill right behind us so i'll see you guys when i walk over there so we were just over here behind gly and i was up here earlier today and there's some really nice machinery up here um that i don't really get but it's magnificent in design so we're walking on the building's roof and everything else i guess it kind of fell it kind of fell down when i did get up here the first time i used this little board but then i just put my foot there i'm quite limber and i moved these boards so that i can get over here but there's nails right there that i don't want to step on so there another huge flywheel this has got to be some sort of ball crusher huh anyway then there's a almost a paddle on the back and a chute here gly um you're standing on a ball mill yeah and nice and uh i don't know how we're gonna get you up here for this but there's a well that trough right there it starts up here and really interesting old works we kind of got to go this way anyway okay well i'll head over there and uh yeah let's we'll take a closer look at that all right so we were there and standing on top of this ball mill it's got this on the side it's got a paddle inside oops sorry about that folks and it hooks into this there's a conveyor belt under here that comes from this hopper and it drops it down and hits it into this paddle and it shoves it over into into this trough that goes down that way pretty cool anyway uh we'll just keep on following this along huh see you when we get over here okay so we've gone around everywhere and we're heading back down this is that trough that was hooked up to everything up at the end of the ball mill and then some interesting contraptions down here i know gly's gonna be able to tell me what they are but they're still moving there's no man noise for you whatever these are there was six of them here and they spin and there's drums on the end of them that have something in them but they're all spinning and i don't know what this is i have never i have never seen anything quite like this ever so all you in the audience if you know what this is please let me know and this is a piece of that i found over there earlier but i don't know i'm not sure what this is mr m this is a brand new contraption that i've never seen before let me give everybody a show or kind of a look at what's maybe underneath oh nope that's just a piece of wood so you can't look under there but you know what this was a trough down under it this is all a truck let's uh i'm gonna put the camera down in here and go up and under maybe we can see what's up and under like that okay this is a very very interesting contraption i don't know wow i'm just i'm really stumped on this one one of them right here upside down okay yeah that's so what i just tried to show you looking up and under that's what it's that's what you would see here's one that's outside and upside down yeah and then there was this over here that caught my eye a little treacherous to get to but this is that section so meet you down there okay so we were just up there and wormed our way down here still no snakes we're disappointed this is an old screener that would go before shaker tables where it has this wooden material over it where it's been protected by the sun it's still got those nice grooves that are cut in that hardwood layer that goes on it just before the silk and you can see it right down in here and then these pipes that are inside would come up and through the outer wood and below the screened area this sorry but the the trough that it's sitting in is laying like this right now but it was like that so this was going around in it and it was filled with slurry and this was a way to de-water it and get that material out so that they could take it and then put it across the shaker table which is right in this next room come on look at that i forgot what they call that guy [Applause] i'd want to call it a centrifuge but um no it's it's not a nuns and bowl and it's not a centrifuge it was just a way um think of it like a collector it was able to collect uh the material coming down from the screener that i just that we just pointed out to you guys and then then that would funnel in a cone-like shape before eventually then that material would go across the shaker table nice yep and now the deck on this shaker table is completely gone now but you can still see you see the water rail up there all the little holes and and out of each one of those holes then it would come across the deck this is a gorgeous sight you know that this is just fantastic because you did not see stuff like this oh my gosh anymore most times out in the open everybody's stolen everything or ruined everything exactly it's so lovely to see like this i can't think of anything more gorgeous honestly i just can't it really is we've uh we found a really really beautiful sight guys all right everybody well thanks for coming along for another great explore i was really hoping that that mine was going to be a lot larger than what it was but i guess the payoff today was this just fantastic mill site i gotta tell you mr m i gotta tell you you know i've not seen anything like it i really haven't it's just magnificent uh i'll think about this one before i go to sleep for a long long time because it's just it's basically untouched yeah it's really rare to come across a mill site like this that's so intact i mean yeah the buildings have fallen down and crumbled and whatnot but there's so much machinery still in place i mean all the concentrating equipment the shaker tables everything what a sight to see i really had a lot of fun on this one i did too thanks for bringing me along gly you're great yeah yeah we had a good time at this site okay well i'm gonna have to jump back into the maps and look for another one for you guys for next weekend so once again i appreciate you coming along for another awesome explore and i will see you again next weekend all right take care bye bye bye [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] good job randy you didn't screw that up i figured using the screw it up had to turn the rock all around and stuff

Channel: Abandoned and Forgotten Places

Views: 97,232

Rating: 4.9585276 out of 5

Keywords: A&FP, Abandoned, Forgotten, Places, Mine, Mines, Tunnel, Exploring, Adventure, Hiking, Artifacts, Antiques, Geology, Prospecting, Gold, Silver, Quartz, Dynamite, Blasting, Adit, Gly, Bobbie, Quackers, Gly Coolness, Old Bob, Old Mine, Old Building, Gold Mine, Ghost Town, Abandoned Mine, Abandoned Mines, Abandoned Place, Abandoned Places, Forgotten Place, Forgotten Places, Mine Exploring, Abandoned Mine Exploring, Exploring Abandoned Mines, Abandoned and Forgotten Places, Abandoned & Forgotten Places

Id: YmXJ5eTvJ9s

Length: 43min 26sec (2606 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020